


In Our Youth Time

by jesterlady



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Canon, Alternate Timelines, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Archaeology, Big Bang Challenge, Canon Het Relationship, Canon Rewrite, Canonical Character Death, Character Study, Community: scifibigbang, Episode Related, Episode: s04e08 Silence in the Library, Episode: s04e09 Forest of the Dead, Episode: s05e04 The Time of Angels, Episode: s05e05 Flesh and Stone, Episode: s05e12 The Pandorica Opens, Episode: s05e13 The Big Bang, Episode: s06e01 The Impossible Astronaut, Episode: s06e07 A Good Man Goes to War, F/M, Gen, Science Fiction, Science Fiction & Fantasy, Season/Series 04, Season/Series 05, Season/Series 06, Time Travel, Time Travel Fix-It, Timey-Wimey
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-29
Updated: 2013-08-29
Packaged: 2017-12-24 23:47:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 7
Words: 32,925
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/946133
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jesterlady/pseuds/jesterlady
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Doctor makes a different choice at Demon's Run and Melody Pond's life is changed forever.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue: Demon’s Run

**Author's Note:**

> A few things to note about this story. I wanted a version of River Song where she grew up as Melody on the Tardis with her family. The story is canon up to A Good Man Goes to War, after that it diverges. The major things to note are that 1. Mels never existed, because 2. Melody can't regenerate. In my eyes, she is more like the Tardis than like a Timelord (why she can fly her, etc), but she only has one life and I'm fine with thinking that it's a life that always has Alex Kingston's body. The only other thing I'd say is that because of the changes the Doctor made, he and Melody will only ever have a familial relationship (uncle/niece).
> 
> Disclaimer: I don't own Doctor Who. Some dialogue is from the show. The title is by William Blake.

_”Can’t you read?”_

The Doctor could read. Oh, could he read. Well, he’d read the pants off whatever it was River was gibbering on about and then he’d force her to sit down and strip her of any gadgets that might let her get out of this situation and then he’d know, he’d finally figure out the mystery of River Song, and- Oh….oh, just…oh, that was it. That was the mystery. Two words stitched on a green cloth by a perfect stranger and they made up two of the most important words of his very long life.

He raised his eyes.

“Hello,” he said.

“Hello,” she replied.

He looked at her and she smiled at him, that knowing Cheshire Cat smile that made him shake his head fondly because he’d never met anyone quite like River Song before.

“But, but that means…”

“Yes, I’m afraid it does.”

“Ooh, so you…”

“Yes.”

Well, that changed everything. His brain lightening quick went down the paths of reason, sorting everything into chronological order. Rory and Amy’s little baby taken here from Demon’s Run, given to the Silence and Madame Kovarian, taken to an orphanage in Florida and put in a space suit, and then vanished, gone to who knows where? But she grew up; she grew up to be this woman standing in front of him.

Oh yes, everything was changed. He was a new man because he knew the mystery of River Song and it was a far better mystery than he had guessed. He was going to tell them the news. Better get spiffed up first.

“How do I look?” he asked, adjusting his bow tie. 

“Amazing,” she said, beaming at him.

“I’d better be,” he said.

“Yes, you’d better be,” she agreed.

The Doctor turned, laughter pouring from his throat, a giddy feeling all through him, and then he stopped…stopped short, looking at the Girl and Boy Who Waited, staring at him, bereft and lost. He had an answer for them, but not one they’d like. They were so patient, so loyal, and so hurt. He could see it in their eyes, a rage and loss as deep and ragged as anything he’d ever felt before. Amy’s face was streaked with her tears and the Doctor remembered the horrible hurt he’d felt when she’d flinched away from him. Rory looked numb, pushing back his pain and comforting his wife like he always did. Always giving everything.

He couldn’t do this to them. His brain raced with the possibilities, with his knowledge, with his facts, what could he do, what could he do? Was there anything fixable here? Was there a loophole? Oh, think, Doctor, think and be useful and clever and a Timelord. What use was he unless he could fix their broken hearts?

This was the time to choose. There was no easy choice. Either way he could be manipulating time too much and he would certainly be erasing…the thought wasn’t pretty.

But he'd made a promise long ago and there was nothing but this choice for him.

He looked back at River and he memorized her face. A manic energy began to flow through his veins and he clapped his hands together and strode toward the Tardis.

“Vastra, Jenny, until the next time. River, you’ll get them all home.”

“Doctor, what are you doing?” Amy asked frantically as if sensing he was going to leave her behind.

Yet, why do that? It was their right; their right as much as his and more so.

He disengaged the force field around the Tardis and pushed Amy and Rory ahead of him.

“Rory and Amy, I know exactly where to find your daughter and, on my life, she will be safe.”

“Doctor!” River yelled from behind him, sudden, terrible realization in her voice. “Doctor, don’t you dare!”

They were inside and he turned to face her, to face her beautiful and wild and lovely face.

“I’m sorry, River. Look at them. Look at them and tell me not to do this.”

“What about me?” she asked, pleading. “Every day, everything we did. You don’t know everything.”

“Nor do you,” he told her sadly. “Even you don’t know what I’m risking here. I’m sorry. Goodbye, River.”

“Silencio, Doctor,” she called out behind him, “I need to be there. Please, list-”

But he pointed his screwdriver at her, disrupting her Vortex manipulator hopefully just long enough, ducked into the Tardis and closed the door and locked it double from the inside and then raced to the controls and set the coordinates. He ignored Amy’s questions and Rory’s looks and the beating of fists on the door that could only be the last act of River Song, a woman who had given everything for him. 

When they landed and they were safe from River’s interference, at least, he hoped, he sank down and put his head in his hands for one single moment before remembering he wasn’t alone and bounced up again, checking sensors and screens and keeping busy.

“Doctor,” Amy said firmly, marching up to him and pushing him, “tell me what the hell is going on right now.”

“Please,” said Rory.

It was the please more than anything that made the Doctor stop and look at his friends. They were still broken but there was a hope there now in their eyes that gave him the strength to go on with his desperate, terrible plan.

“I know where Melody is,” he said softly. “Let’s go get her.”

“What about River?” Amy said. “She was really upset.”

“She’ll never be upset again,” the Doctor said. “Now I’m going to mess with time, for Melody, are you in or are you out?”

“You know we’ll do anything for her,” Rory said.

“Then Geronimo,” the Doctor said, leaping up and out the door and away.

They followed him into the dark of an orphanage and there was a single light shining in a room down the hall. They walked toward the light silently and the Doctor opened the door. A nightlight hung above a crib.

“Doctor, we’ve been here before,” Amy said, looking at the room.

“Yes, we have,” the Doctor said, “that’s what makes it so dangerous. But we’re a little early.”

The baby lay in the crib and the Doctor scanned her just to be sure there were no more tricks; he refused to be fooled ever again. The Tardis was set up to automatically detect flesh gangers now and so was his screwdriver.

“Is it her?” Amy asked, the wistful sound in her voice almost too much for his hearts to take.

He grinned and scooped the little baby up. 

“Yes, yes, yes, it is.”

“Let me hold her, please,” Amy said, her desperation overflowing in her eagerness.

The Doctor put her daughter in Amy’s arms and something clicked in his head at the very moment it happened. He was overwhelmed with a sudden onslaught of memories and timelines and he keeled over.

“Doctor!” Rory said, whispering urgently. “Are you all right?”

“We need to go,” the Doctor gritted out. “Now!”

They needed no more urging. They went back down the hall, there were sounds from all around them and the Doctor saw…and then there wasn’t anything and hadn’t that happened before? Footsteps were creaking up the stairs and his head was going to explode and it wasn’t until they were in the Tardis again that the Doctor felt some relief. He was afraid River was going to show up any second, he was afraid the Silence was there, he was afraid he wasn’t thinking clearly. He put the Tardis in the Vortex and then…then it was done.

“Is it over?” Rory asked in the vast quiet that fell at that moment.

The Doctor examined his memories and felt how very real he was and then looked at Amy, cradling her child.

“It’s begun anyway,” he said happily.

Rory’s hand left the pommel of his sword and his soldier’s stance relaxed and he put his hands toward his daughter.

“Amy…Amy, can I?”

Amy’s fingers tightened perceptibly and then relaxed as she looked up.

“You never really got to hold her, did you?” she said softly.

“No,” Rory said, his voice hoarse.

The Doctor felt his eyes get wet as Rory held his daughter for the first time and he couldn’t regret his decision looking at the three of them. His best friends and their daughter. They were whole again. They would do so much.

“Doctor, my head’s a bit funny,” Amy said. “My memories. This is like the Pandorica all over again. What did you change?”

“I’m remembering different things,” Rory mumbled, obviously only half paying attention, still absorbed with his daughter.

The Doctor winced. Trust these two to remember things when he hoped they wouldn’t. Couldn’t the universe ever just change around them? No, they always had to stand straight in the middle, transparent brains on overdrive, and point out the flaws in his plans.

“What did…R- that woman…what was her name? R-something. Something wet. River, that’s it! What did River tell you?” Amy asked, snapping her fingers as she got the right name.

“There is no more River, Amy,” the Doctor said. “In order to save Melody, River had to go away. At least, the River we knew.”

“I don’t understand,” Rory said, finally looking up from Melody.

“It’s all perfectly simple,” the Doctor explained. “We changed River’s personal timeline. She was Melody. Now, instead of being the River we know, she’ll be a different River, hopefully be Melody.”

“River…Song was our…daughter?” Amy asked, seeming to try and wrap her brain around it.

“Yes, and she still is. She just will have a much better childhood.”

“Doesn’t that mean you erased the existing River?” Rory asked.

“Not erased, altered,” the Doctor said happily. 

A little niggling voice in the back of his mind – a voice that sounded suspiciously like River’s – told him he hadn’t known all her secrets and he couldn’t be sure, but if there was ever a time for enacting rule number one, this was it.

“Are you sure it’s okay?” Amy asked, scrutinizing him closely.

He gestured with his hands.

“It’s fine. Trust me. Now, that’s that.”

Amy eyed the Doctor skeptically but then Rory kissed Melody and handed her back to Amy and kept his arm around her shoulders.

“Is she okay?” Amy asked him, seeming to give up the questioning for the moment for Melody’s sake. “Does she need anything?”

“We should run some tests,” Rory said, wiping his eyes and turning to the Doctor. “See how much time has passed for her?”

“You’ll make a time traveler yet,” the Doctor said, whirling into action.

They took Melody into the med bay and the Doctor examined her, explaining everything carefully to Rory while Amy hovered nearby.

“She’s healthy,” Rory said finally, heaving a huge sigh.

“Are we safe now?” Amy asked, holding Melody again. “Is this it? Can we go home now?”

“Not that we don’t want to be here…” Rory interjected, seeming to feel some kind of obligation, “but it’s not really the place for a child, you know, Doctor. We should take her home.”

“I know,” the Doctor said, ignoring the twinges of pain. “But…you can’t.”

“Why not?” Amy asked.

“They won’t stop looking for her,” the Doctor said softly. “You’d be sitting ducks in Leadworth. I know my life isn’t always safe, but it’s safer than there. I can protect you all. I promise.”

“You love to make promises you can’t really keep,” Amy said, closing her eyes.

“Tell me a better way,” the Doctor said.

“There is none,” Rory said, sounding resigned. “But, Doctor, if we do this, then changes have to be made. A regular schedule. A human schedule. A child can’t run, can’t go for hours on no sleep, can’t surf cosmic waves, can’t understand alien customs, can’t survive desert conditions, or survive being separated from the rest of the group. We have to live like normal humans on the Tardis. And one of us always has to stay with Melody on the Tardis while any adventures or world saving is going on and it will not always be me, agreed?”

He looked at both of them and Amy seemed to realize as well as the Doctor did that there would be no arguing with Rory this time. When he put his foot down, he kept it down, and he was usually right when he did. Didn’t mean the Doctor had to like it.

He sulkily nodded and shook Rory’s hand in agreement, but he knew, he knew that this was what had to be. He’d made his decision on Demon’s Run, back when he’d changed the world and his own life forever. The timelines were still in flux, every decision they made now would continue to change them, but the big things, the more fixed events, they were looming inside his head reminding him that changing time required sacrifice and no matter what he changed some things would still happen.

One thing would still happen. He'd saved and doomed at the same time.

“You’re stuck with us now,” Amy said, grinning.

“Nobody’s life is perfect,” the Doctor said, grinning back.


	2. Child of the Tardis

Melody’s life was, in one single word, perfect. She was healthy and smart and she lived in a space ship; one that could travel in time and was bigger than some planets. On the inside that is. There was a wardrobe the size of a small country and a swimming pool and Melody had been getting lost in the enormous library since she was old enough to walk. She had two parents, a kickass mother who taught her all about standing up for herself and a patient father who taught her all about standing up for other people. They loved her and she loved them more than anything. 

And she had the Doctor. The Doctor was an alien, a Timelord from the planet Gallifrey. He was tall and funny and smart and silly and had a bowtie and was always wearing different hats and fixing things with his sonic screwdriver. He could do anything. Absolutely anything.

Melody was only eight years old but she knew that her life was a lot different than other kids, other human kids. Sometimes she wondered why they didn’t live on Earth in a house and why she didn’t have other kids to play with like in the films they watched in the big cinema with just the right amount of butter on the popcorn, but it didn’t bother her too much because who needed other kids when you had the Doctor to play with? Besides, Melody had been to other planets and she’d gotten to meet John Wayne before, so she definitely wasn’t complaining.

Besides, sometimes they went to Earth and Melody got to see her grandparents. It was always a bit strenuous though because whenever they did Melody wasn’t allowed anywhere alone and she had to stay with the Doctor or her mom or dad the whole time, wearing a perception filter every single second, and the Doctor was always scanning everything with the sonic screwdriver and her parents were really jumpy. Plus, she wasn’t allowed to talk about the Tardis or anything exciting like that. Melody loved to tell stories so that definitely put a crimp in her style.

But she liked seeing Earth and hearing about Leadworth where her parents grew up and the house where the Doctor had fixed the crack in her mother’s wall when she was just a girl. Also her grandparents were really nice. Grandpa Gus was jolly and absentminded and Gramma Tabby was always trying to give Melody more cookies than she could eat. And then her other Grandpa, her dad’s father, was really smart and always teaching Melody about how to fix things and about gardening and the proper use of trowels.

They thought Melody was adopted and she often wondered why, but she had a deal with her parents. They always told her that their lives were different and sometimes she couldn’t know things, but that when she needed to, they would tell her; she would always know what she needed to. And they kept their promises. She learned more every day and a lot of what she learned was really cool.

When they weren’t on Earth they were on the Tardis. The Doctor and one of her parents had a lot of adventures on other planets and sometimes she got to come, but only sometimes, and always with the same security procedures as when they were on Earth. It was hard but she bucked herself up with the thought that she’d get to do more when she was older. One of her parents always stayed behind with her and sometimes even just her and the Doctor were left together on the Tardis and she’d spent hours watching him try to fix her (Melody instinctively felt that the Tardis was a she) or listen to him tell her stories or he’d put on costumes and play pirate or Silurian or Jaheifev or cowboy with her.

But she liked best the times when they were all on the Tardis and in the morning she’d wake up in her room because the Tardis would tell her it was time to get up and there’d be something new all laid out for her to wear. They’d eat breakfast and then Melody would go to school in the library with all of them teaching her different things like math and science and English and history (all worlds) until lunch and then in the afternoon she’d get to pick whatever thing she wanted to learn best and the Doctor would tell her absolutely everything about it while her parents had what they called ‘alone time.’ And they’d all have dinner together and then watch a movie or go exploring in the Tardis or play games or she’d curl up on the couch in her dad’s arms and listen to them tell stories about the adventures they’d had. Sometimes the adventures would change but Melody didn’t tell them the stories had changed. Maybe they already knew. 

When she went to bed at night one of her parents always tucked her in. If it was her mother, her mother would kiss her forehead and say,

“Goodnight, Melody Pond, my little rock star.”

Melody would grin and nod and go to sleep planning on saving the universe just like the Doctor and her parents.

If it was her father, her father would kiss her cheek and say,

“Good night, Melody Pond, my little girl.”

Melody would huff dramatically and say,

“I’m Melody Williams,” and listen to her dad chuckle and tell her not to tell her mom that.

Then Melody would go to sleep and think about how very nice their family was.

If the Doctor put her to bed he said goodnight in a funny voice and tickled her and told her not to mind the Velusian bedbugs.

Then Melody went to sleep thinking about how she was going to grow up and be just like the Doctor.

So, Melody’s life was perfect and she didn’t want it to be any other way. She didn’t know any other way for it to be. The things she saw on other worlds or with her grandparents or in films paled in comparison to the fun she had on the Tardis and the life she shared with her parents and the Doctor.

***

When Melody was twelve years old her parents went on vacation. Personally Melody thought this was a silly idea because every day of their life was like a vacation but her dad said something about needing a break, though not from her, and she believed him because her dad never lied about anything. They sat her down in the console room and told her that they were going to be at a leisure hotel on the Planet Montifev and would have their cells if anything went wrong and to be a good girl for the Doctor.

Melody laughed because after they talked to her they turned to the Doctor and gave him a much longer list of instructions and warnings including watching out for silence, (whatever that meant), not letting her stay up all night, no world saving, calling them every day, no regenerating, no this and that and too many other things for Melody to remember other than that they made the Doctor squirm under her mom’s biting voice and her dad’s stern look.

“Who’s the Timelord here?” the Doctor protested and started to fiddle with his bow tie. “I’ve been saving the universe before either of you were born a hundred times over. A little respect might be in order.”

“Respect has to be earned, Doctor,” her mom said teasingly and patted his cheek.

The Doctor sputtered and then grew very serious.

“You two are vulnerable too, you know,” he said. “This is an experiment, so be prepared for it to blow up.”

“We’re doing it to make sure, to see what they’ll do,” her dad whispered, looking closely at Melody.

“I won’t be there to protect you,” the Doctor said.

“You’ll be protecting her,” her mom said. “That’s more important than anything. We’ll be okay. I’m not letting them take me again.”

“I’m bringing my sword,” her dad said and Melody’s ears perked up at that since her dad was amazing with a sword and only brought it out on very special or dangerous occasions.

The whole conversation was incredibly interesting actually. They were letting drop a whole lot of information her curiosity had never been able to uncover before. Perhaps they thought she couldn’t hear but Melody had discovered from a very young age that it didn’t matter where she was in the Tardis she could hear very low conversations but only if the Tardis seemed to think she needed to know the information. Apparently, this was one of those times.

“Goodbye, Melody,” her mom said, hugging and kissing her. “We love you very much.”

“More than anything,” her dad agreed. “Be good and try not to give your Uncle Doctor a heart attack while we’re gone, eh?”

“I can’t promise anything,” she said solemnly causing all three of them to laugh.

“That’s my girl,” her mom said and then exited the door.

The Doctor rubbed his hands together.

“Right, we got rid of them, didn’t we? What shall we do? I’ve got some things working in one of the labs that your father would have a fit if I showed you.”

“Uncle Doctor,” Melody said carefully, wanting to phrase the question in the best way possible, “what did my mother mean about watching out for silence? Isn’t that a contradiction?”

The Doctor’s mouth dropped open and he glanced around as if looking for an escape route. Usually when he did that one of her parents would be there, but now there was just him.

“I have to dematerialize,” he said, running to the console and flipping the switches necessary to put them into the Vortex.

Melody had always known what each of the switches did almost instinctively but she’d never told anyone before.

“That’s not an answer,” she said, once they were safely away.

The Doctor’s face got a closed look that was always harder to break than any look of panic or affability.

“Melody, I’ve made some promises. One of them includes not telling you things before your parents think you’re ready. Now, you already know that there were some people who wanted to do bad things to your parents before you were born and that’s why they had to keep on traveling with me, even with a baby. That’s all I can say right now. Do you want some ice cream?”

“No, thank you,” she said politely, inwardly frustrated, then smiled rather evilly. “Actually, yes.”

“Right, right!” the Doctor said, spinning. “The Planet of Ice Cream, wait, no, can’t go there, not in any time, not just because of…well, got banned. So, the kitchen it is and the Tardis has everything we need.”

He led the way to the kitchen and Melody followed, but not before carefully typing a query into the Tardis console and tucking the printout into her pocket.

A short while later the kitchen was covered in whipped cream and Melody had almost entirely forgotten about her questions from laughing too much, especially at the Doctor’s face while he charged her with a can of whipped cream ready to spray.

Later that night she’d cleaned up and the Doctor was saying good night to her.

“Uncle Doctor,” she said sleepily, “if I needed to know something you’d tell me, right?”

“If and yes,” he said, a note of caution appearing in his voice.

“I love you,” she said, getting into bed.

“Uh, thank you, yeah, me too,” the Doctor said.

Melody was used to the Doctor not really being able to say those three words directly and she didn’t mind. He wouldn’t be the Doctor otherwise and her mother had told her once that they must always tell him they loved him anyway even if he couldn’t say it back.

Melody pulled out the printout as soon as he’d closed the door and read it in her bed.

 _What is the silence?_ she’d typed.

_The Silence is a religious organization whose chief query and concern is the Question. They do not want it ever to be asked and answered. Their motives for such concerns is unknown. The Question is unknown. They have declared war on the Timelord known as the Doctor and two of his human companions and their daughter who they claim to be their property. It is unknown when or how the Silence was formed or who the members are._

Melody was pretty sure her whole life had just changed.

She didn’t know what to think. After all, it wasn’t every day you found out that you were wanted by a mysterious organization. Lots of little things started to make sense to her. Why her parents never let her go anywhere alone and barely let her leave the Tardis, why she couldn’t tell anyone about their life. Little comments heard over the years were understood in a way she hadn’t before.

It scared her. It made her a little bit angry. She wanted her parents to come back so she’d know they were okay, so she could yell at them, so she could see them. She suddenly didn’t feel safe, even on the Tardis, the Tardis who must have decided it was okay for Melody to know now, or she never would’ve let Melody have the information.

“Can you protect me?” she whispered into the air. “Will the Doctor keep me safe?”

A reassuring hum filled the air and Melody quieted, the feeling of being held in someone’s arms overwhelming her senses. She suddenly felt sleepy and she drifted off to sleep, determined to find out more answers now that she knew some of the truth. If the Doctor wouldn’t tell her, she’d wait for her parents and if they didn’t, the Tardis would help her find out, she was sure of it.

Melody was nothing if not a determined person.

***

When Melody woke up in the morning she’d quite recovered from her scare of the night before. But she was still resolved on finding answers to suit her questions. Why was she wanted by the Silence? How could they possibly think she was their property? She trusted her parents and she knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that they were her true parents. Maybe the Doctor had done something to anger the Silence and her parents had just got caught up in the middle. The three of them seemed very happy with each other and neither of her parents seemed resentful, not even her dad. It was definitely puzzling.

She went for breakfast and grinned when her mother’s voice filled the Tardis with her usual voice alarm whenever she was absent.

“Doctor, get your raggedy self to the kitchen and make sure Melody doesn’t eat a breakfast consisting entirely of leftover ice cream.”

The Doctor soon stumbled in, muttering words under his breath, but grinned when he saw her.

“Nice sleep then? Right, what shall we do today? Better play some squash on the courts. Oh, the garden needs work. Clean the pool, fix the console, excursion to the Other Side of the Tardis?”

He waggled his eyebrows at her and Melody laughed.

“I want to go to the library,” she said.

He sighed.

“Not again. Books are good, books are wonderful, but don’t you find them just a little bit…dull?”

“No,” she said. “It’s not my fault you have the attention span of a goldfish.”

“I do not,” he protested.

“Pretty near,” she said. “I know your brain works faster than ours, but that’s still no reason not to enjoy things.”

“You’ve been talking to your father about me again, haven’t you?” he asked suspiciously.

Melody simply lifted her eyebrow at him.

“The things I do for you humans,” he said and sighed, taking her by the hand and leading her toward the library.

Melody wasn’t surprised to find a relatively healthy breakfast waiting for them.

Melody spent her morning surreptitiously looking for books on the Silence while the Doctor took down three shelves and rearranged everything on them, then disappeared, yelling over his shoulder that he’d be in the console room if she needed him and not to wander off.

Which is what she’d been waiting for and she smiled to herself. It was very easy to get around the Doctor sometimes; you just had to know where to push. It would have been a lot harder if her parents had been there.

The Tardis had given her a list of books to choose from and Melody chose one entitled _the History of Demon’s Run,_ which was really boring for the most part until she came to a section entitled _the Battle of Demon’s Run._

Fascinated, she read all about old earth planes in space, lizard people like the Doctor’s friend Madame Vastra, and Headless Monks all fighting for or against the Doctor for…her.

There was a poem and it frightened her.

_Demons run when a good man goes to war  
Night will fall and drown the sun  
When a good man goes to war  
Friendship dies and true love lies  
Night will fall and the dark will rise  
When a good man goes to war  
Demons run, but count the cost  
The battle is won but the future is lost_

Melody shut the book and cried for a little while. She still didn’t know anything about why, just how, and she was confused and mad. Why didn’t her parents tell her these things? What else weren’t they telling her? Why was she so important?

The Tardis was being stubbornly blank and all Melody was left with was the thought that she needed to ask her parents.

Just then the Tardis shook violently and Melody dashed for the console room, suddenly much closer to the library than it had been previously.

“What’s happening?” she asked.

The Doctor was running around like a madman.

“Someone’s trying to force us out of the Vortex,” the Doctor yelled. “Not your parents. Wrong signal.”

“Will it work?” she asked, her mind already assessing the damage without any conscious command to on her part.

“Not if- I could use some help,” the Doctor admitted, waving her over. “That lever there-"

“The decompression,” Melody said promptly, already working at it.

Then she moved onto the next step, seeing what the Doctor was doing and calculating how to work in tandem with him.

He stared at her, a little nonplussed before his jaw snapped shut and he grinned madly, and then continued his own share.

The Tardis began shaking less and Melody found it easier to work. Some of the instruments were hard for her to handle, so she let the Doctor do those bits.

“We’re cooking now,” the Doctor said, swooping around the console with his long limbs, reaching around Melody or pulling on her hair, lifting her to grasp a high lever or ringing the bell seemingly just because he felt like it

Melody started to smile too, this was fun, it felt…right to her, and she was almost glad somebody had been trying to get at the Tardis.

The Tardis finally slowed and the Doctor looked at the monitors.

“Are we safe?” she asked.

“Safe? No one’s ever safe,” he said, glancing sideways at her. “You’ve been hiding secrets of your own, Pond Jr.”

She hated it when he called her that.

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“I’ve been flying the Tardis for a millennia and even I don’t know how to fly her that well. I mean, that instinctively. Not that well. I fly her that well. Better. Yes.”

She rolled her eyes.

“I just thought…I don’t know,” she said.

The Doctor smiled.

“Child of the Tardis, Melody Pond. Now, let’s call your parents.”

“But…”

“They’d kill me if I didn’t and then you’d have to get used to a whole new me and so would I and it would just be really awkward.”

The Doctor typed into the keyboard and then a ringing sounded through the air.

“Doctor? Is she okay?” her mom’s voice echoed in the room.

“Fine and better,” the Doctor said, winking at Melody. “With tricks all her own. You two okay?”

“Being followed,” came the reluctant answer. “Time for Plan B, I think.”

“Say no more,” the Doctor said. “Be at B in two jiffs.”

“Five for us.”

“Right.”

The Doctor hung up and Melody hadn’t understood one word in five that they said, but she did understand that her parents were in danger, probably because of her, and that she and the Doctor had to save them.

“What can I do?” she asked calmly though she was panicking on the inside.

“Can’t replace me just yet,” he told her, sticking his tongue out. “Have to keep a few of my secrets.” He landed them somewhere and cautiously viewed the screens, then started pushing a lot of buttons. “We’ll smokescreen them,” he said.

A rattling, banging sound started from outside and then a key clicked in the lock and her mother stumbled in, limping, a gun in her hands. Her father was right behind her, twirling his sword and using it forcefully against something Melody couldn’t see. Both of them had strange hashtags drawn on their arms and faces. Her dad slammed the door behind them.

“Go!” he yelled.

The Doctor spun the dials and they were away. Melody ran to her mother, her father was carrying her now, the sword dropped on the floor.

“What happened?” Melody gasped. 

Her parents had gotten hurt on adventures before, so had the Doctor, but it had never been like this.

“Grab the sword, Melody, there’s a good girl,” her dad said, giving her a strained smile. “Carefully now. Don’t hurt yourself. Come along to the infirmary. Doctor, we safe?”

Melody felt the warm, homey atmosphere she associated with the Vortex and nodded amidst the Doctor’s assurances they were fine.

It was a bustle of activity after that with the Doctor and her dad hovering over her mom who kept protesting that she was fine and was the Doctor really sure they hadn’t been followed?

Melody sat quietly in the corner, watching, waiting.

After awhile, her mom’s leg had been bandaged and her dad’s various cuts and bruises and they all stood upright, sharing some sort of collective ‘after the danger ends’ sigh. Then she rushed to her parents and hugged them tightly.

They hugged her back and then she backed away and spoke loudly. 

“I’m ready to be told about the Silence.”

***

The three of them stared at her like she’d suddenly grown another head. She could say that with authority because she’d seen them look at someone who’d done just that once.

“Melody, what do you know about the Silence?” her mother asked in a strangled voice.

“Not much, which is why I’m asking,” Melody said firmly. “I’m old enough to know.”

They looked at each other using their silent communication method that the Tardis had never yet bothered to clue her into.

“Sit down,” her dad said, wincing as he moved, gathering her toward the comfy chairs in the mock waiting room.

She sat down primly, curled up against her dad’s side, but not enough so that she couldn’t see all of their faces.

“Melody, we’ve always said we’d tell you the truth when you needed to know it,” her mom said. “You’re still young and we want you to be able to grow up without fear but there are some things we should probably tell you based on today’s events.”

“I’ll say,” she said impertinently and warmed to see the Doctor’s ducked grin. “The Tardis told me about the Silence and about Demon’s Run. I think she did it because…”

“Because she knew how you two would be returning today,” the Doctor said to his companions. “That’s my girl.”

“I’m her mother,” her mom said, scowling at the ceiling. “I don’t care how much you had to do with it, let me do the parenting.”

Melody could sense something like a loud sigh but she thought it better not to mention it.

“Melody,” her dad said, “why don’t you tell us everything you learned and we’ll fill in the blanks we feel comfortable telling you about.”

So she did, resenting slightly how her dad had arranged it so she’d tell all first and they wouldn’t be tripped up into revealing more than they wanted to. But she trusted him. He’d tell her what she needed to know. When she finished they looked simultaneously horrified and relieved.

“Well,” her mom said.

“Yeah,” her dad replied.

“Indeed,” said the Doctor.

They were so infuriating.

“Your turn,” she said pointedly.

“Melody, are you okay?” her dad asked, squeezing her a little tighter.

Suddenly she felt about five years old, wanting to curl up with her daddy while he kept everything bad away from her. But she wasn’t five anymore and even when she had been five her brain had been much older, she was convinced of it.

“I’m okay,” she said. “But I need to know. Please.”

Her mom leaned forward and took Melody’s hands.

“Sweetie, none of this is your fault. The Silence are bad people and you’re not responsible for anything they do. I don’t care what the books that you read say. They weren’t there, I was, and I’m telling you that you’re not to blame.”

Melody nodded tightly but didn’t trust herself to say anything. She was afraid she would cry.

The Doctor was looking at her with a strange look on his face.

“If anything it’s my fault,” he told her, leaning against the wall. “I’m a menace to the order of the universe, you know. This version of me, the one you know, the man I’ve been for twelve years, he’s pretty tame actually. Some think I’m too dangerous to let live, but I’m very difficult to kill. So they thought they needed someone as special as me, someone like me. But I’m the last of my kind so how was that gonna happen?”

“They wanted to use me to kill you?” Melody asked, confused. “But I’m just a human.”

“Are you?” he asked.

“Shush, Doctor,” her mom said fiercely. “Don’t go giving her ideas. Melody, you are human, but you were conceived in the Tardis, a very special place, and that made the Silence think they could use you against the Doctor.”

“So when your mom was pregnant with you, they stole her away from us,” her dad said sadly. “They sent a copy to take her place. A copy with her actual mind inside. The Doctor figured it out and we went to rescue her. That’s the battle of Demon’s Run. At the end though, we had your mom back, but not you. They’d replaced you with a copy too. So we went to find you. We did and made sure it was really you and we brought you to the safest place we could think of, the Tardis, to protect you.”

“But…” she said trailing off. “But they’re still trying to find me?”

“Yes,” the Doctor said, “which is why we live the way we do. All cooped up and human-y.”

“Doctor!” her mother said warningly. “Melody, we’re so sorry we have to bring you up this way, but it’s for your own protection. It doesn’t matter what we do, the Silence thinks you’re their weapon to kill the Doctor.”

“But I don’t want to,” she said in a small voice.

“We know,” they all three said.

“Do I look frightened?” the Doctor said cheerily. “Kill me? You? Don’t be ridiculous. More likely to make me live to two thousand.”

Melody smiled a little.

“I’m sorry I’m so much trouble.”

“You’re not any trouble,” her dad said. “Frankly, I’m surprised at how little trouble you are. Any child of Amy’s should be-"

He cut off when her mom elbowed him hard in the ribs and Melody giggled.

“So, what happened today?” she asked.

“I imagine Madame Kovarian has been tearing her hair out trying to find us the past twelve years,” the Doctor said. “There were a couple of times when you were smaller that trips to Earth were a bit dicey. I’ve used a lot of tricks keeping them from finding us there or figuring out your grandparents.”

“Are they safe?” Melody asked, suddenly worried that their attempt to give her some normalcy had put the people she loved in danger, even while mentally making a note to find out more about Madame Kovarian.

“That’s why the visits have been very few and even less as you got older,” her mom said. “They are safe, don't worry. We wouldn’t let anything happen to them.”

“So today…”

“Well, we were trying to draw them out a bit,” her dad admitted. “We need to know what we’re up against. So we thought we’d see if they could track us. They did.”

“Which we were aware of immediately,” her mom said loftily.

“I think they must have known that and decided to get at the Doctor and you while we were playing the distraction,” her dad said. “So…they tried to get you out of the Tardis. Pretty serious actually.”

“Almost impossible,” the Doctor said, starting to pace while he thought. “They must have used a…”

Melody tuned him out as he would be sure to go on for a while in the same drift and turned back to her parents.

“Once they failed with you, they tried us,” her mom said. “And failed, as per usual. So, now we know.”

“You’re still not telling me everything,” Melody said, studying their faces.

“Nope,” her dad said. “Trust us. It’s better this way.”

“I’m scared,” she admitted.

“Oh, sweetie,” her mom said, leaning forward and hugging her. “I’m so sorry. Be a brave girl. It’s hard, I know. But the older you get the better chance we have of them failing. Now that you know, you can help us by being careful.”

“Very careful,” her dad added.

“I promise,” Melody said and snuggled further into their arms.

“We love you, Melody Pond,” her mom said. “And we’ll never let anything happen to you if we can help it.”

Melody noticed her mom didn’t make a promise she couldn’t realistically keep and she appreciated that. Nothing was certain, she knew that, she lived in a time machine and the Doctor always said time could be rewritten. But she had her parents and they were all safe in the Vortex for right now. And at least she knew a bit more.

“Now can you tell me why you guys drew all over yourselves?” she asked.


	3. Woman on the Run

Melody’s life was absolutely amazing. She threw the grapple hook and tugged it forward to make sure it was secure. Sliding her gloves on more securely she started to climb, enjoying the stretch and pull on her muscles.

“She’s up there!” came the cry below her and she flashed a smile over her shoulder and kept climbing.

“Will you hurry up?” the Doctor shouted above her and she shook her head.

“Honestly, Uncle Dear, you do carry on. I’ll get there when I get there.”

“Core explosion in two minus fifteen seconds.”

The computer’s voice drowned out any protest the Doctor made and Melody concentrated on making it to the top before they all died.

She threw the device they’d come for into the Doctor’s outstretched hands and he starting fiddling with his screwdriver while she finished climbing.

“That’s my girl!” he crowed. “Melody Pond scores again.”

“Don’t let my dad hear you talking like that,” she cautioned, looking over his shoulder to see if the countdown was stopping.

“He does have a very big sword even if he is getting a bit old to wield it,” the Doctor mused.

“He’s also got very good aim,” she reminded him, holstering her own blaster that the Doctor hated that she carried but she did anyway after the events of her seventeenth birthday.

“Ponds, horrible Ponds, with all their weapons,” the Doctor said, shuddering. “I’m getting soft in my old age.”

“Yet you insist on looking about twelve,” she told him despite the fact that she was only twenty two and probably not old enough to judge anyone on their age.

“That’s very much beside the point,” he said, screwdriver waving dangerously close to her face. “Come along,” he said, twirling the device into the air and then sticking it firmly to the terminal. “I do believe our work is done here.”

“And we’re ahead of schedule, I do believe a prize is in order,” she said.

“Ah, ah, Melody Pond,” he said, striding away, annoyingly guessing exactly what she wanted. “I am not either of your parents, thank all that ever was in the universe, and you’re a grown up woman, sort of, so fight your own battles.”

“You know how protective they are!” she said.

“With good reason,” he pointed out.

“Better reason than most tv sitcoms, but still…I need to be free. I need to explore. I need to know. I need to…stand on my own two feet. I want to learn.”

“No reason you can’t do all that in the Tardis,” the Doctor said. “Besides, what do you think we’re doing here now? Do you see your parents anywhere? Do you or do you not have free control of your limbs? Have you or have you not made some incredibly risky decisions so far today that they would never agree with?”

“Stop being ridiculous,” she said. “I know perfectly well you’re reporting back to them.”

“Me?”

“Yes, you. Don’t try to deny it.”

“Well, Amelia Pond has had me wrapped around her fingers since she was younger than you,” he said. “But I resent the implications. I am a neutral third party, like Switzerland or the Third Brain of Belitzi.”

“You couldn’t be neutral if you painted your body with it,” she said, sliding past him and clicking open the Tardis doors with her fingers.

He snapped them closed again and faced her.

“Now, just cause my Tardis likes you…”

“I’m a part of the Tardis,” she corrected him. “I’m not like you, but I am like her. I have the right to open my own doors.”

“There’s something very wrong with that statement,” the Doctor said, and then stopped as he saw the horde of aliens running toward them over the bow of the ship. “And I will analyze it later and give you a full report.”

He opened the doors and shoved her inside, then slammed them shut behind them.

Melody was already at the controls, flipping the levers to dematerialize them.

“Where would we like to go?”

“I promised your mother somewhere with lots of greasy food,” he said.

“Done and done,” she said, turning the dial. “Now, if you don’t need me I shall take your excellent advice and talk to my parents directly.”

Her mother was sitting in the kitchen flipping through a magazine.

“Good world saving then?” she asked idly.

“Why is it that you’re so okay with my risking my life on alien planets but absolutely can’t stand the idea that I’ll go to university and get an education?” Melody asked, sitting down, peering to see what magazine it was.

Her mother flipped it shut and leaned forward. She had aged, though not too much. Living in the Vortex/Tardis tended to slow down the aging process. She was older but she kept her hair a violent red and insisted on keeping fit and active and painting her fingernails though she had foregone a lot of the short skirts and Melody loved her deeply.

“Because none of us will be there to look after you and the Silence come at you from the shadows. In the excitement and blaze of adventure you’re safer than in the quiet of books.”

“You read that somewhere, didn’t you?” Melody asked suspiciously.

“No, I did not,” her mother protested. “Besides, you know I’m right.”

“I know you’re right to be worried, but not that you’re right,” Melody said. “I know you’ve felt what I feel, Mother. You grew up dreaming of the Doctor. I had him right in my grasp all along, but though the Tardis is wonderful, I’ve lived most of my life cooped up in here because of something that’s not my fault. I need to breathe.”

“And if you get captured and…”

“Then you can say I told you so,” Melody answered promptly.

Her mother laughed, then grew thoughtful. Melody waited for a few agonizing moments before her mother spoke again.

“I’ll talk to your father. But I’m still against it.”

“Against what?” asked the man in question, coming into the kitchen.

“Melody going to university.”

“I…agree?” he said hesitantly.

“Have your own mind, Dad,” Melody said flippantly.

“You keep a civil tongue in your head, young lady,” he said.

She sat up straighter like she always did whenever her dad got stern.

“Yes, Father,” she said sincerely.

Her mother shook her head at her husband.

“Only you, Rory.”

“That’s why you married me,” he said, dropping a light kiss on her lips then turned to Melody. “Mellie, I think you can do whatever you want to, you know that. We’re just hesitant to let you go. We’ve tried to keep you safe for so long.”

“I know how to take care of myself,” she said. “Please, let me do this. I’ll check in, I’ll use a perception filter; I’ll do whatever I need to. I’ll take my courses in different years if need be.”

“That’s…not a bad idea,” her mom said.

“I like it,” her dad agreed.

“The Doctor will have a field day,” her mom said.

“Just remember how the Silence almost got you on your birthday,” her dad said.

“And how they might be influencing you and you’d never even know it,” her mom put in.

“How terrible it would be if they succeeded,” her dad added.

“How-"

“Look,” Melody interrupted her mother, “I know all that. But I’ve got to get out there and see for myself. I need to make my own mistakes. I’ve got the best defenses anyone could have. I have the Doctor on my side, I’ve got the gift of the Tardis, I have you two, and I grew up saving the world. But someday I have to know if I can do that on my own or if it was just the company I keep.”

“There’s nothing wrong with being supported by those you love and who love you,” her dad reminded her.

“Exactly,” she said. “That’s my point. Support me and let me try. I’m not too proud to say I failed or too arrogant to think there might not be a failure.”

“That’s true,” her mom admitted.

“Then I can?” Melody asked. 

Not like she couldn’t just go, but they were a family and they were on the run and that’s not how they operated.

They looked at each other for a long time before turning back to her.

“Yes,” her mom said.

Melody hugged them both.

“I love you guys,” she said. “I’ll make you proud of me.”

“We already are,” her dad reminded her.

“Oh, but just wait till you find out who Melody Pond is going to turn out to be,” she said, barely noting their suddenly blank faces.

***

Melody lifted her wrist and discretely scanned her location. Everything looked all right but she wanted to make sure. Everything about her life had a secret purpose. Her earrings were detonators, her necklace was a teleportation device, her bracelet was a Vortex manipulator, her boots had concealed slits where she kept her knives, and her pockets were bigger on the inside and always held at least one blaster. 

She was simultaneously doing four years of university in four different time periods under four different names. It made life exciting; that was for sure. It was the best cover that they’d been able to come up with and Melody was rather proud of all the layers of protection they’d generated to prepare for her to come.

And she was almost done. 

She’d passed test after test before she even placed into her courses, cutting out years of work, and now, within a few short weeks, she’d be a full blown archaeologist. A doctor. She couldn’t wait because then she was going to make the Doctor and her parents do something with her about the Silence so they could stop living like this and she could go out into the universe and turn it on its head.

Melody Pond was going to live her life no matter what.

She whispered the voice activated codes into her manipulator and put up a field around the closet she was currently hiding in. 

“Hello, APs,” she said, having recently acquired an affinity for Dickens.

“Don’t call us that,” her mother responded, a hologram of her image flickering in and out of the darkness.

“Amy, give her a rest,” her dad said, appearing at her mother’s side. “We only get a few moments every time, don’t waste it being picky.”

“You are so going to pay for that,” her mom said.

“I hope so,” her dad said and Melody wrinkled her nose.

She was a lot less opposed to lovey-dovey interaction between her parents than most humans her age, but now who was wasting time?

“Have you got the coordinates?” yelled the Doctor from the background and Melody’s smile grew larger.

“How’s my dear uncle?” she asked.

“Bored,” her mom said. “We haven’t let him planet hop because we didn’t want to be in the middle of anything when you called.”

Melody’s parents and the Doctor had spent the last four years being a red herring for the Silence, resuming their life of mad adventuring, slowly at first, then building up to what it had been before Melody was born. They were always on the move instead of spending practically all of their time in the Vortex as they had while she was growing up. They used tricks of their own to make the Silence think she was still with them, flesh gangers of her, illusions, filters, and running a lot.

Melody sometimes thought they were getting the better end of it. Her parents were getting older chronologically, but physically they were still able to keep up with the Doctor as well as they ever could. Plus they were traveling, doing things, saving worlds. Melody was simply studying. Okay, and meeting people and blokes and she wasn’t ever going to tell them about her Easter hols her second year, but she’d had very minimal danger because she was being more cautious than was her want.

“Well, I’ve got them for you,” Melody said. “Tell him I’ve been using those forging skills and now…at the end of the road, all of my different years are being combined into one person. That one person, Joan Smith, will be receiving her doctorate on this date at these coordinates. Sending now and I hope to see you there.”

“Of course we’ll be there,” her mom said, eyes shining. “We couldn’t be prouder of you, Mels.”

“No, we’re fairly bursting with it,” her dad agreed. “And so’s the Doctor.”

“That’s right,” the Doctor said, bursting onto the scene and shoving her parents off. “You, Pond Jr, are a star. I never thought anyone could pull it off, but then I did teach you all you know. So there is that. Now…you sent it all? Right, see you there.”

“We love you,” said her parents off screen.

“Yeah, yeah, all that,” the Doctor said, winking at her and then the image faded away.

Melody shook her head and left the closet.

She spent the next few days preparing, being extra careful, and ignoring invites from her mates to go out after exams. She didn’t want to put anyone in danger and she didn’t want to put herself in danger.

It all went off without a hitch. She crossed the stage and winked at the professor she’d had her completely innocent eyes on all year and launched herself into her parents’ arms. 

“You did it,” her dad said. “Congratulations, Mellie.”

“We’re so proud,” her mom concurred. “Well done.”

“Got you a little present,” the Doctor said, looking smug, “but it’s back on the Tardis. You’ll get it when you come back.”

“Oh, Uncle Doctor, you spoil me. Just a hint as to what it could be?” she asked, putting her hands together for effect.

“Won’t work on me,” he said, looking away valiantly.

It would have but her parents intervened.

“We can’t stay long,” her dad said. “It was a risk coming at all.”

“Especially with all your different personas combining into one degree,” the Doctor said. “A lighthouse in the fog if ever there was one. They can’t recognize us. Now…you’ve got the meet up, right?”

“Sure, just have to wrap up my loose ends and I’ll be home,” Melody said, hugging them all one more time.

“We can’t wait to have you back, sweetie,” her mom said, holding her tightly. “I’ve missed you so much.”

“I missed you too,” Melody said truthfully.

“Gotta go, gotta go,” the Doctor said.

Melody rolled her eyes and stepped back.

They disappeared into the crowd and Melody blinked back a little tear. It had been really good to see them in person and touch them. It had been too long.

But she had a lot of goodbyes to make and some touch up work to do in the administrative offices after hours so she spent the next few hours doing everything she needed to. She was all packed and went to the library to grab a few things before leaving. She was seated at her favorite table, nicking a few books, ones that mentioned the Silence and the Doctor, one of which had the rhyme that had always puzzled and scared her as she didn’t know what it meant.

_Tick tock goes the clock and what now shall we play?  
Tick tock goes the clock now summer’s gone away._

_Tick tock goes the clock and all the years they fly,  
Tick tock and all too soon you and I must die._

_Tick tock goes the clock, we laughed at fate and mourned her,  
Tick tock goes the clock even for the Doctor._

_Tick tock goes the clock, he cradled and he rocked her,  
Tick tock goes the clock till River kills the Doctor._

She didn’t know who River was, but whoever it was had better watch out because Melody would never let anyone hurt the Doctor.

She was thinking about that when she looked up and saw the thing she dreaded the most even if she couldn’t remember what it looked like most of the time.

“You never really escaped us, Melody Pond. We were always coming for you,” a gravelly voice from the shadows said.

“Who are you?” Melody asked, pulling out her gun, but a sharp pain slipped into her neck and her vision was foggy and for a second she forgot there was anything to be scared about and then…a woman’s face filled her vision, cold and sharply angled with a black eye patch covering one eye.

“I will make you into your destiny. The woman who kills the Doctor.”

Melody’s eyes shot open in panic and she struggled for a few moments but everything was so heavy and cold and then there was just nothing.

When she woke up she was underwater and inside what looked like an old Earth astronaut suit.

***

Melody wasn’t having the best day. It was difficult to move and she was feeling somewhat claustrophobic. Her eyes blinked rapidly, the only part of her with any real freedom. When she tried to shift her arms and legs she found it was impossible; somehow the suit was controlling all of her movements. She was suspended in water, peering through the tinted visor at passing fish and trying her very best not to panic.

She was usually quite cool in sticky situations, but this wasn’t something she could wiggle out of with hallucinogenic lipstick copped from a brothel on Lidas 7 or the Doctor’s sonic screwdriver. She was well and truly stuck, in the clutches of foes who had been trying to capture her since she was a baby. It had to be the Silence, who else would have gone to so much trouble to capture her like this?

She couldn’t remember how she got here. She’d been in the library speaking with a woman and then she’d woken up here. She had no idea where here was or what she was supposed to do. Perhaps she was meant to float there for all time, slowly dying, yet somehow her oxygen had to be resupplying. Melody took a deep breath and tried to think.

When she was little her parents had told her stories about an astronaut in a lake. The story had changed several times and sometimes they checked themselves before saying things when she questioned them about it. Funnily enough they never talked about the astronaut in front of the Doctor. There hadn’t seemed to be much importance to it at the time and they’d never gone into much detail as if it was too painful for them, but she had remembered it all the same.

Was it possible she was that astronaut?

She couldn’t tell how long she floated there but all too soon and yet not soon enough she was jerked forward, her motions stiff, controlled by the suit. She walked forward, each step a little weirder, until she rose from the surface of the water and took in her surroundings.

She thought it was Earth, red, rolling cliffs above a brilliant blue lake. There were people on the shore. The Doctor was one of them and he strode to meet her. With absolute clarity she suddenly understood her parents’ stories and what the suit was for and why she was here. 

And she’d never been more terrified in her life.

She immediately started trying to fight the suit, trying to figure out how to stop it, manipulate it, or trick it. All for nothing. Nothing let her change anything. She just kept moving forward to the Doctor and her unwanted destiny.

She stopped in front of him and her hand moved without her permission, sliding open her visor to reveal her face to the Doctor.

“Well, then. Here we are at last,” he said and there was only kindness in his face.

“I can't stop it,” she whispered. “The suit's in control.”

“You're not supposed to. This has to happen.”

“Why?” she asked, desperate for him to answer her with a clever plan.

She’d never known the Doctor not to have a plan, never known herself not to be able to change a situation. The two of them could do anything, yet there she was, unable to move, and there he was, apparently refusing to.

“Melody, there’s a lot I wish I could tell you, but I can’t. You just have to trust me.” 

“You could run!” she pleaded.

“I did run. Running brought me here.”

“I’m trying to fight it, but I can't; it's too strong.”

“I know. It's okay, Melody. This is where I die. I’m so sorry it has to be you, but this is a fixed point, this must happen, this always happens. Remember what I always told you.” She did remember. From her earliest moments he’d told her about time, about the vast spectrum of it, how it could be manipulated, when it should be, when it absolutely could not be. And she’d always understood his words with a bone deep clarity she knew came from the Tardis. “Don't worry, you won't even remember this. Look over there,” he said, pointing.

She looked and saw that her parents were standing there, looking younger than she’d ever seen them, and a woman. With shock she realized it was herself, one arm holding her mother back, one arm clutching her father’s hand.

“That's me. How can I be there?” Melody asked, practically sobbing now.

“That's you from the future. Completely unaware that you’re standing here in a suit as well.”

“Why would you do that? Make me watch?”

The Doctor was many things, many terrible things, but he was not cruel and he had never treated her badly. Why would he make her watch as she killed him, her best friend, her mentor, her family, the most wonderful person she knew? Why would he make her parents watch their daughter do something like that?

“So that you and I both know this is inevitable. And you are forgiven. Always and completely forgiven,” he said gently, smiling his special smile for her.

“Please, Doctor, Uncle, please. Please, please just run!” she said as the arm of her suit began to rise. 

“I can't.”

“Time can be rewritten,” she said desperately. “You taught me that.”

He stepped closer to her and she was so close she could see everything she’d never noticed before. Nobody looked too deeply into the Doctor’s eyes if they could help it, but she was forced to now.

The levels of pain and regret and age written there thrilled and horrified her and she would have wept again if she wasn’t already. But there was something else, something else in his eyes. Something that suddenly gave her hope even if she didn’t understand it.

“Not this time,” he said, winking at her. “Goodbye, Melody.”

It was the most awful thing to ever happen in the universe but Melody watched herself pull the trigger and kill the Doctor. She shot him in the middle of his regeneration cycle and he fell to the ground and the suit took her away, back into the deep, while her parents ran toward their best friend and her older self emptied a revolver pointlessly in her current self’s direction.

Melody let herself cry as the water swallowed her whole and barely noticed the suit taking her deeper, the ship that opened to receive her, or the woman who deactivated her suit.

“Well done, Melody,” the woman said.

“Who are you?” Melody asked sharply as the suit came off.

“My name is Madame Kovarian. We met on the day of your birth.”

“Why did you make me do that?” Melody asked, feeling completely worn out.

“To win,” Madame Kovarian answered. “Now it is over.”

“Then let me go,” Melody said, fingers itching for her blaster.

She wanted to be anywhere but there right now watching this woman gloat.

A bright flash of light interrupted them as the other woman opened her mouth to answer and Melody wanted to cry when she saw her parents appear, looking the same age as when she’d left them. Her mother held a Vortex manipulator while her father wielded a gun and his sword, which conveniently materialized right underneath Madame Kovarian’s neck.

The woman froze but her eye patch suddenly flashed silver around the edges.

“Time to go, Melody,” her mother said. 

Melody rushed to their side as Silence appeared all around them.

“She did what you wanted her to,” her father said dangerously. “Now, you don’t come after her ever again, understand?”

“We have no more need of her,” Madame Kovarian said gleefully. “The Doctor is dead.”

“You don’t have to remind us,” her mother said bitterly. “Just be glad my maternal instincts are stronger than my desire for revenge.”

“I will count my blessings,” Madame Kovarian said scornfully.

Melody grasped hold of her mother’s arm and the Silence disappeared and Melody couldn’t remember exactly what they were running from except that the Doctor was gone and she was free and then they materialized and they were on the Tardis and the Doctor was standing in front of them.

***

“You’re alive,” Melody cried, throwing herself into the Doctor’s arms.

He caught her and squeezed her tightly.

“Now, Pond Jr, what kind of a greeting is that? You know better. I could have been a younger Doctor who didn’t know anything about Silencio.”

“Shut up, you’re alive!” Melody said and felt him kiss her forehead.

“Yes, I’m alive,” he said.

“What happened? What the hell was that about? Are the Silence really done running after me?”

The Doctor looked over at her parents and they nodded as one to him.

“The minute you didn’t show up to the rendezvous we knew something was wrong,” her mom said.

“So I went to the library and followed your trail,” the Doctor said smugly. “You were in Silencio Lake and so I wanted to go get you.”

“But then we had to tell the Doctor something we’ve kept from him for a long time,” her dad said. “About his death.”

“He took it like a baby,” her mom said. “He started to run and there wasn’t much we could do to stop him. It was about six months before he slowed down.”

“I don’t understand, how did you know?” Melody asked. “I know you were there but…”

“When we were younger the Doctor invited us to Silencio,” her dad said. “We saw you kill him, but we didn’t know it was you. Then a younger Doctor showed up who didn’t know anything and we met the Silence and there was a whole summer that happened and pretty soon after that we went to Demon’s Run.”

“So, you didn’t know you’d died?” Melody asked the Doctor.

“Had the Ponds holding it over my head for about a quarter of a century,” the Doctor said, looking quite proud. “Never happened before. Of course I got my own back just now.”

“Spoilers,” her mom said, giving the Doctor her patented 'I'm being more mature than the thousand year old alien' look.

“You can take the girl out of Earth…” Melody said, trailing off, hugging her mother. “So you confessed once you knew where I was to get him to go die.”

“If it’s a choice between you and the Doctor,” her dad said, his voice shaking, “we always choose you. All three of us.”

The Doctor nodded, but Melody saw something sad in his eyes and she knew that no matter how many things someone else may know, the Doctor would always know just a little bit more. She didn’t want to know what kinds of things those were.

“But it turns out because I’m very brilliant that I didn’t really die,” the Doctor said. “While we were running, well, while I was trying to figure out why the Silence wanted me dead so badly, I learned a new trick or two. Handy little things tesselecta.”

“So it was a robot?” Melody questioned.

“Not quite,” the Doctor said smugly. “It had to be perfect. The perfect copy of me, it had to be able to emulate my regenerations and everything. I barely even got singed in that boat.”

“Boat?” Melody asked.

“Oh, well, you and your parents burned the tesselecta, getting rid of the evidence. Younger parents, older you. I got out in the Tardis while your parents went to rescue you. Older parents, younger you.”

“That makes so much sense it could be in a book,” Melody said sarcastically. “But I still need to know…”

The Doctor looked at her and his face tightened. He glanced back at her parents and after a minute they got up and squeezed her firmly.

“We’ll be in our room,” her dad said. “Just yell if you need us. I think the Doctor has something he needs to say.”

“You don’t do anything you don’t want to,” her mom said. “And, Doctor, try not to change things. I’ve already got two different versions of that beach swimming around in my head, I don’t need more.”

“Do my best,” the Doctor said, giving her a salute.

When they left Melody sat for a minute while the Doctor paced around.

“Could you please tell me what the hell is going on?” she asked. “You’re not dead. I’m glad you’re not dead, but wasn’t someone named River supposed to kill you? How will you keep the Silence from figuring out you’re alive? Will they really leave me alone? What now? What did you change about the beach?”

“Easy now,” he said, folding his arms. “You’ll do yourself harm.”

“Just tell me,” she whispered. “Who am I?”

“You’re Melody Pond, daughter of Amy and Rory, child of the Tardis, the woman who killed the Doctor, Dr. Joan Smith, archaeologist.”

“That doesn’t help.”

“I’m going to tell you some things,” the Doctor said, crouching in front of her. “Hard things. Hard things about me and about time. But I can’t tell you everything unless you agree to something first. I’m going to have to make you forget.”

“Then why bother tell me at all?”

“To ease my own conscience maybe,” he said ruefully. “But just a few things. You’ll remember most of it, but I have to make you forget about killing me otherwise the beach will change again for your mother.”

“I guess I wouldn’t mind not knowing that,” Melody said. “But…how can I forget? What about the Silence?”

“Timelord wiles,” he said, tapping his head with a self-deprecating smile. “As for the rest, well, let me tell you a story. The story of a woman named River Song.”

The Doctor spoke for a long time, pacing, using silly words, not looking at her, standing too close at other times.

Melody listened, listened as she found out she was someone else, that she’d lived a whole other life. That the Doctor had taken it from her; that he’d given her a life with her parents instead. That she had been brought up by the Silence, brainwashed, put in prison for murder, that he had erased that existence.

“If time's been changed why do the history books say River kills the Doctor?” she whispered, unable to really think of anything else.

“That’s what we’re going to say,” the Doctor said. “We’re going to circulate that so the blame doesn’t fall on Melody Pond. The Silence doesn’t care who takes the fall so long as I’m dead. You’ll be able to live your life without boundaries.”

“That’s all you’re keeping of her, the fact that she killed you,” Melody asked, suddenly furious.

The Doctor rounded on her, his face full of pain.

“I gave up more than you can ever dream. I keep everything of that woman and all that she did. That woman is you, Melody. I made a promise to your mother a long time ago and I kept that promise at the expense of a lot of things but don’t make the mistake of thinking I don’t mourn the loss of River Song.”

“Do they know?” Melody asked, slightly taken aback. “Do they know I used to be River?”

He nodded.

“They don’t know everything either and they can’t remember the old timeline as well as I can, but they know enough. They were in the eye of the storm and they've been through the Vortex, so they remember, but it fades the older they get, and the more time they spend away from the Tardis. The younger versions won't know anything at all. But…don't be angry at them for keeping this from you, Pond Jr. They always wanted to tell you when it was time.”

Melody looked at him numbly.

"I'm not mad at them," she said. "They've always told me the truth when it was time. I just feel a little…lost."

"Er, sorry," said the Doctor, never the best at giving emotional comfort.

“So everything that I-she-River did, what happened to it?”

“You were still there; you still did everything you needed to, just by a different name, a different way of life.”

“So…time was rewritten,” she said to solidify it in her own mind.

“But time has a way of healing its wounds. It couldn’t hide what happened from someone like me or the fact there was a different timeline from time travelers like your parents, but it makes sure things happen the way they’re meant to.”

“You say that like it’s all fate.”

“I’d say I was fated to meet you, Melody Pond,” he said with a smile.

Melody sat back in her seat, pulling her legs up to her chest.

"So, was River like me?" she asked. "Did she act like me? Was she a part of the Tardis too?"

"Yes, both of you are exactly the same in that respect," said the Doctor. "Your timelines hadn't verged until after you were born, so your abilities, for lack of or maybe in spite of, a better word, are the same. You both know the Tardis, can fly her, can keep track of time."

"Nothing else?" asked Melody. "I won't suddenly be able to fly some day, will I?"

He grinned and shook his head.

"We wondered if maybe you might have other tricks hidden away, like maybe you could regenerate like me, but we discovered that wasn't the case. You're more like a Tardis than a Timelord and more like a human than a Tardis."

Melody nodded.

"So, was she like me?"

The Doctor cocked his head and appeared to think.

"River was…mysterious, she liked to keep me guessing, cheeky. But she was a bit…psychotic, a little violent, maybe arrogant. Sometimes you seem like a little mini version of her, but I think you're the her that she could have been. It's, it's your parents, Melody, they gave you love and life and discipline and boundaries. River Song never had any of that."

"Then you think it's for the best?" she asked.

"I don't know," he said. "But, yes, I do. It's best for them, and best for you. Best for time? Best for her as she was? Well, those are different questions."

“So what are you going to take away from me?” she asked, trying to wrap her head around his words.

“Two things. The fact that you killed me and how, and who River Song was. In your mind you’ll have come straight here from graduation. You’ll know River Song as the cunning ploy your parents and uncle came up with to keep the Silence from coming after us anymore.”

“You really think you’re so clever, don’t you?” she asked bitterly. “You think you can just make everything better.”

“If I could take back the memories that have been stolen from those I love…” the Doctor said and Melody had flashes in her head from the Tardis, a young dark haired man and woman and a ginger headed woman, and Melody suddenly didn’t want to know. “I would do it. Sometimes it’s necessary. And I’ve had it done to me; I know how hard it is.”

“I hate this. I never thought I’d say that I didn’t trust you with my life,” Melody said, tears starting to fall. “But right now I don’t know if I can trust you.”

“I trust you with mine,” the Doctor said. “There was something else about River Song. She lived in time and our lives were traveling apart from each other, backwards and forwards. Many occasions when we met she knew things I didn’t know, including who she was. She kept me from spoilers, knowing I needed to live my life in my time. You can do the same thing. I trust you with this burden of time, of preserving it. Will you accept it?”

Melody had to think about it. She’d gotten some revelations she didn’t want. She didn’t know how she’d feel once certain things were taken away. But most of all…there was this new Doctor in front of her, one capable of things she’d never imagined before. Still her mind kept going back to one thing, what it felt like to point a gun at him and what her heart went through when he fell to the ground. Melody Pond had lived her life knowing one thing, she loved the Doctor with a deep passion and he had always taken care of her, changing his whole life, changing the world, to keep her happy.

“Yes,” she said softly. “Yes.”

The Doctor looked at her with wonder on his face and he smiled. 

He rummaged around in the console for awhile and brought out a package.

“Your present,” he said.

She took it with trembling fingers and unwrapped it. Inside was a journal, a brilliant shade of blue, the same color as the Tardis.

“Pretty sure I deserve more than a book,” she said, trying for levity, but she loved it anyway.

He chuckled and tapped his fingers on it.

“Not just any book, Melody, this book is the way you’ll confuse and outsmart all my younger selves. It has pictures of all of them so you’ll know if you meet them to keep mum about the future, not tell them who you are or about your parents; don’t ever mention your last name. You’ll meet your parents when they were younger, though I don’t think you’ll meet me before I was this man, but funny thing time…”

“It can be rewritten,” she said, looking at him steadily.

“Yes, but it doesn’t change the events that led to it being rewritten. So I will always, even when I was younger, remember River Song. And every time I meet you, I’m going to remember it two different ways, but I won’t know why, not yet. So I might get very angry with you. Please don’t get all snippy with me over it.”

“You’re so ridiculous,” she said, sighing, feeling completely overwhelmed.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t think as well as I could have when I chose this path, but, Melody, I couldn’t do that to your parents, not again. And…you’ve been happy?”

“I’ve never wanted any other life,” she said, putting any bitterness aside, though some sorrow remained. “I’m ready.”

He put his fingers to her head and the last thing she remembered was his cool breath on her forehead.

“All my love, Melody Pond.”


	4. Spoilers

Melody lifted the boxes from the back of the van and walked toward the house with the blue door. Her dad opened it for her and she spoke over her shoulder.

“Where do these ones go?”

“Top of the stairs and to the left, that’s your mother’s work room,” he said.

“Right.”

She climbed the stairs and put the boxes down and then went back downstairs to where her mom was taking a break from unpacking the kitchen.

They drank cups of tea in silence before Melody broke it.

“I could stay longer if you want.”

“Don’t be silly, sweetie,” her mom said. “It’s time for you to get on with it, living life. Most women leave home long before now.”

“I left home,” Melody protested.

“Hard to leave home when it wanders after you,” her mom said knowingly.

“Well, I’m leaving all my homes now,” Melody said.

“You’re very strong,” her mom said, looking sharply at her. “Your father and I have a part to play here, but yours is just as important and I’m sorry it has to be like this.”

“I know, I know. It’s just for awhile,” Melody said. “With the Doctor dead the Silence will probably keep an eye on me even if they don’t come after me. I have to stay away from him so they don’t follow me back to him. We think they know I would never stay on Earth like my two grieving parents either.”

“It’s a bit weird to be back,” her mom said, looking around. “I don’t think I remember what it’s like to cook in a kitchen that can’t fix your every whim before you even know it is your whim.”

“You’ll get used to it,” Melody said. “Besides, I’m not sure you ever cooked anyway.” Her mom shoved her and laughed and Melody continued. “Think how happy Grandpa and Gramma Tabby and Grandpa Gus will be now that you’re home. They need looking after.”

“And then come all the wrinkles,” her mom said ruefully.

Melody laughed.

“I think you’ll start to age gracefully,” she said reassuringly. “But are you guys all settled with everything you need?”

“Yes, everyone knows we were raising our adopted daughter abroad and now that she’s struck out on her own we’ve decided to come back home and retire, taking care of our own APs.”

“That’s not quite what I meant.”

“We’ll get by, sweetie. You go out to the stars and give them hell for us.”

“I will,” Melody said, suddenly feeling teary-eyed. 

Everything was happening so suddenly. One minute they’d all been celebrating her graduation and then the Silence had come and somewhat ruined everything. The Doctor and her parents had come up with a plan without her and it was rather cunning though they refused to tell her everything that had happened, but it meant the end of an era of her life. Melody was free of the Silence, they’d leave them all alone now they thought the Doctor was dead so Melody could come out of hiding, but it meant they all had to leave the Doctor and Melody couldn’t imagine a worse fate than that. She already missed him.

The last time she’d really seen him he’d given her a journal and entrusted her with the gift of time, telling her about her future so that she could protect his. She wasn’t sure if the next time she saw him if he would even know her. But she had his gift and everything he’d taught her and she could make visits to Earth a lot more easily than he could. He would need to stay away for awhile as the Silence would likely monitor the Earth just in case.

“You two okay in here?” her dad asked, coming into the kitchen. “Any left?”

“Plenty here,” her mom said, patting the seat next to her and pouring him a cuppa. “You talk to the hospital yet?”

“Yeah, they said they could use some extra help on certain days. Nothing full time obviously since I’m very retired, but it will be good to put my skills to use.”

“Leaving me time to write without you hanging around,” her mom said affectionately.

“Try not to write too many science fiction stories,” he said, brushing a hand down her back as he sat down. “So, Mellie, you all ready for your trip?”

“My world tour?” she said pointedly.

“Yes, the world tour that consists of only this one world,” he said, winking at her.

“I’m sad to leave you guys,” she said, “and I’ll miss everything about before, but I’m ready. I’m ready to really be on my own. We fixed it so my degrees are in my name now so Dr. Melody Pond is off to see the stars. I’ve got a job lined up investigating the Bone Meadows. I’m quite excited actually.”

“We’re proud of you,” he said.

“Don’t start, Rory,” her mom said, but there were tears in her eyes.

“I’m so so glad I got to grow up as your daughter on the Tardis,” Melody told them, giving them a hug, wondering why her mom suddenly looked sad, but brushed it off as ‘her only daughter was leaving home, empty-nest-syndrome.’ “Now, I’ve got a visit with the grandparents and then I’m off. I’m going to teleport to a lunar station and catch a shuttle from there. Anything else you need?”

“No, we’re ready to be on our own too,” her dad said. “It will be quite an adjustment, but I think we’re finally ready for it.”

“Not that you get out of visiting quite often!” her mother said. “We’ll expect you on all holidays and in the right time, got it?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Melody said, laughing. “I have a very good sense of time management; I think that can be arranged.”

“You really do,” her dad said, hugging her, kissing the top of her head. “Anybody needs dealing with, let me know. I know you can handle it yourself, but I’m always there.”

“You’d probably just patch them up after,” she told him, kissing his cheek.

“I’d just let them lie there, so come to me,” her mom said, holding her tightly. “So proud of you, sweetie.”

“I love you both very much,” Melody said. “I’ll keep his secrets and yours, I promise.”

“We know,” they said. 

Melody grabbed her bag with her journal and various too-advanced-for-this-time-period devices and went to see her grandparents, eating way too much with Grandpa Gus and Gramma Tabby and gardening a bit with her Grandpa.

Then she had to leave the Earth behind. Her life and her childhood and all transition periods were over now. The silent menace that had followed her all of her life was gone and even though she still had a job to do she was free to do it. She blew a kiss to the planet Earth before she vanished.

***

Melody discovered it was rather freeing living on her own without anyone looking over her shoulder, her parents, the Doctor, the Tardis, her professors. Sometimes she did have a boss, but she was strictly freelance so her time was her own and even if someone else was ultimately in charge, she didn’t answer to anyone.

She traveled, glorying in the space of the cosmos, investigating this and saving that, and basically doing everything her parents and the Doctor had taught her. She missed them terribly though, hopping home to see her parents whenever she could. Wherever she went she kept her eyes open for the blue box that was as much a part of her as her limbs.

Sometimes she found it too. Melody went to all worlds and all times and it was inevitable she’d find the man who did the same. She stayed away from his younger selves if she saw them, not ready for an encounter with a Doctor she didn’t know, not sure if she could properly dispatch her duties as a keeper of time. But she did meet her Doctor sometimes.

She was careful. As much as she wanted to call him Uncle and ask him how he was, she never spoke first unless he did. He’d always seen her before, but it was quite obvious that sometimes he did not know her as Melody Pond, just as Melody, that he hadn’t watched her grow up. It was harder than she’d thought it would be, but she did it gladly for him. She hadn’t counted on how much a person’s identity depends on how others see them. But with the Doctor she should have known better.

She saved his life at the Bone Meadows. He saved hers on Easter Island. Afterwards, she went back home to her parents and found them a little sad.

“Did someone die?” she asked, concerned.

Her dad actually laughed at that, but then her mother hit him on the shoulder and he stopped.

“Never mind him,” her mom said.

“Tell me what’s going on?” Melody asked.

Her mom held up a Tardis blue envelope with Melody’s name and a number 3 printed on it.

“For you.”

“What’s that?”

“Open it and find out.”

Melody opened it and found coordinates inside.

“What’s it mean? Where am I supposed to go?”

“A place,” her mom said. “It’s okay, you’ll see us there.”

“Some reason we’re not going together then?”

“We’ve already been,” her dad said, gesturing. “Your turn now.”

“So I’m going to meet younger versions of you?” Melody asked, excited now. “I’ll get to see you when you’re all young and fit?”

Her mom smiled.

“We won’t know you, sweetie. We’ll know you as Melody, but not as our daughter. You haven’t been born yet for us.”

“Oh.”

That was less fun, but still exciting.

“And will the Doctor know who I am?”

“Not as our daughter.”

“Well, I guess I’d better go then.”

“Come back here when you’re done,” her dad said.

“You guys are scaring me, okay.”

She waved goodbye and left.

Melody checked her coordinates and made a short stop to make her clothing more appropriate.

When she materialized at the spot she found her parents reuniting with the Doctor, so young, so innocent. And the Doctor…he looked the same even if he was sporting a Stetson now.

She resisted the urge to shoot it off his head.

They went to a diner and she and the Doctor exchanged notes. He knew about Easter Island and Jim the Fish, not very much then. But Melody was starting to enjoy her position as know-it-all and lording information over him. He’d certainly done it enough to her.

Her parents were newlyweds, well, mostly, and adorable. Her dad especially seemed a bit uncomfortable around her and that was the weirdest thing she’d ever encountered. It was also very strange to call them by their names, but she did, not slipping up once.

They went for a picnic and the Doctor told them stories, strange stories about his travels, and then the unthinkable happened.

An Apollo astronaut rose out of the water, the Doctor went to meet it, telling them to stay back, and died.

This was it then, this was how it happened, the plan they’d concocted, it must be, because Melody refused to believe the Doctor was actually dead. She was filled with rage anyway and emptied her gun at the disappearing astronaut and then calmed down again when she saw how distraught her mother was.

And in the end it was horrible but they burned the Doctor and went back to the diner and found…the Doctor.

Melody slapped him. She’d never done that in her entire life before, but he was so cocky and she’d just seen his body disintegrate.

But it was a younger Doctor, one who didn’t even know about Jim the Fish and then she knew the older Doctor had played her even better than she was playing her parents.

She resolved to play this younger Doctor just as well. Melody had a slight vindictive streak inherited from her mother.

They went on a grand adventure with Canton Everett Delaware the 3rd and the Doctor and her parents met the Silence for the first time and hobnobbed with Richard Nixon and set out to rescue some child, which they did.

It was hard actually, fighting the Silence when Melody knew what they were really like, knew what they were after, and had been used by them before. But only when she was looking at them. The horror of the Silence was that one could never quite remember how horrible they were; just that something had been there.

When it was all over and humanity delivered by Neil Armstong’s boot, the Doctor took her back home. Well, back to the right year anyway.

“Not going to travel with us, Mysterious Melody?” he asked.

“You’re a little too young for that,” she told him.

“Do you know how old I am?”

“I doubt it, but that’s all right, I know you.”

“How do you know me?” he asked.

“Family connections will get you anything,” she told him before vanishing into the night and landing in her parents’ backyard.

“She’s here, Amy,” her dad called.

“You little brats,” she told them, hugging them.

“We’re sorry,” her mom said. “Time travel isn’t always easy.”

“I’m sorry I had to lie to you so much,” Melody said. “It was rather tricky.”

“You did it well,” her dad said. “Hey, I can finally say it, but thanks for confiding in me down in the tunnels.”

“I’ve always been able to tell you everything,” Melody said, and it was true.

Her dad was a true confidant, a great listener, and loyal to a fault.

“We know it’s going to get harder,” her mom said. “You’re gonna have to keep on lying, keep on pretending. I don’t know why you keep living backwards.”

“Child of the Tardis, I can handle it,” she told them.

“Stay to dinner,” her dad said. “Got your favorite.”

“Right, then I’ve got to get back. I’m doing a study on ancient artwork that I just can’t wait to get into.”

They smiled at her and led her into the house.

***

Melody landed in her room and crossed it to check everything. She always did that when she came back, not wanting to be careless just because she was time traveling. 

“Missing something?” a voice from behind her said.

“Doctor?” she asked, turning around, hating that she jumped.

There was a figure lounging on her bed, though she noticed that her shelves had been completely rearranged. He must have been really bored.

“Melody Pond.”

“What kind of a Doctor are you?” she asked, hugging him tightly.

“One that gave you a graduation present.”

“Thank goodness,” she said, hugging him again. “I didn’t feel up to pretending tonight.”

“You’re doing really well,” he said. “Younger mes don’t have a clue.”

“It’s odd,” she said, stopping to think for a minute. “It’s like I can feel what to say and what not to. Like time itself is telling me.”

“Your connection to the Tardis, I think,” he said musingly, idly running his screwdriver over her form and then looking at it absently.

“To what do I owe the pleasure?” she asked.

“I owe you some memories,” he said.

“What?”

“You remember right after your graduation?”

“Yes, and you wouldn’t tell me about your little fake death plan. Now I see that must have been so I would be genuinely surprised when you invited me to it. Though why you invited me I don’t know.”

“You were already there,” he said as if it was the simplest thing in the world.

"You took something from me after my graduation?" she said slowly. "Something that wouldn't have changed the timelines again."

"With your permission," he protested.

“Then, yes, I’d be glad to get my memories back, only you’re sure they won’t…be too much?”

He looked at her in surprise.

“I’ve never known you not to be up to the challenge.”

“I know; I just have this niggling feeling I won’t like what I’m going to get back.”

“Probably not. Not all of it anyway. But isn’t it better to know now that you won’t be messing up timelines by knowing?”

“You’re right.”

“As always,” he said smugly, putting his hands to her temple. “I’m sorry, this will be a shock.”

Oh, then she remembered. She remembered it all, graduating, being taken, shooting him, the fact that she had been someone else once upon a time.

She gasped and sat down on the bed hard, reeling from the suddenness. Yet she had the feeling it was easier for her than it would be for anyone else apart from him.

“That smarts,” she said after a minute.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“Fit as a fiddle,” she said frowning.

“Really weird phrase,” he said. “I must see where it comes from. Do you…do you forgive me?”

“What’s to forgive?” she asked. “I saw what you saved me from. I got a good look at the orphanage you all rescued me from when I was a baby. When I- I saw it and, I tell you, in that moment, I could forgive you anything for having rescued me from such a fate. I shudder to think about what I would have been like if I’d been raised there.” Melody did shake her head, throwing off the memories and went on. “I have a feeling you’re not telling me everything about who I used to be, but I know how you saved me. So don’t ever think I’m not grateful.”

“It was still…sticky.”

“Very sticky,” she agreed, bumping his shoulder with hers. “But like jam, not like tar.”

“Hate tar,” he said, shuddering.

“Bad memories?”

“You may find it funny, but there’s not a lot that I don’t have some type of memory of.”

“Not funny, Doctor-y.”

“What frightful grammar.”

“What proper talk.”

“Shut up,” he said, bumping her shoulder back. “Anyways, I have a task for you, should you choose to accept it, though you really have to because if you don’t none of this will ever happen and we’ll all cease to exist, at least you will, and there will be awful causality wounds, Reapers and such.”

She stared at him.

“That was quite a speech. What do you need me to do?”

“Go to Demon’s Run and tell me who you are.”

“The younger you that simply remembers two different timelines but not how they’re connected?”

“Yes, so that I will know who you are and go and rescue you again. And so you don’t get named something horrible like Ruth if Rory gets a hold of you.”

“What?” 

“Well, who knows what your parents will name you if you don’t tell them your name is Melody.”

“Maybe they just chose the name cause they liked it.”

“Well, before maybe, but now they know a Melody and I doubt they’d name their daughter after you. No offense.”

“None taken, I guess.” Melody rubbed her head, she was getting a headache. A time headache or something. “So just go to Demon’s Run, tell you that I’m me, and that’s it?”

“You don’t mind giving Vastra and Jenny a ride home, do you?”

Melody rolled her eyes.

“Okay, I’ll do it.”

“No rush,” he said and bounced up again. “Can’t stay, just wanted to let you know all that and everything, but it’s a bit soon for us to be hobnobbing socially.”

“Is your secret safe?” she asked.

“Like a time lock,” he said.

“Then someone could get through,” she said.

“Yeah, if they wanted to go insane,” he replied.

“Hmm, who would want to do that?” she pondered, putting her finger to her chin.

“I’m leaving now,” he said with dignity.

She grinned and hugged him. 

“Thanks for giving me my memories back. Sorry for killing you and everything.”

“My pleasure and it’s all a moot point,” he said.

“Where’s the Tardis?” she asked, looking around.

She could feel faint traces of the Vortex like she usually could when the Tardis was around, but it was nowhere to be seen.

He clicked his fingers and the doors swung open in the alcove next to her door and he laughed at the slightly astonished look on her face.

She glared at him and was annoyed at herself especially since she’d just seen the Tardis in camouflage mode and then ran to the doors, looking through, relishing the warm hum of activity and intelligence and time she could feel.

“Hello, Mother Tardis,” she said, stroking the door slightly.

The Doctor went inside and tapped her nose before shutting the doors.

“Go save the universe, Melody Pond.”

Melody smiled and gave him a little wave as the Tardis dematerialized, her signature sound echoing in the suddenly quiet room.

Melody moved around her room silently, putting her things away, rechecking her security systems, getting ready for bed. She didn’t need as much sleep as most normal humans, but she was exhausted, having been up for more than a few sleepless nights during her latest adventure.

She lay in her bed, rearranging her thoughts, trying to make sense of everything, making sure she understood all of her memories. She’d made it her business to understand all the mysteries of her life from a very early age, gaining answer after answer with each new stage, but there were still things she didn’t know.

The mystery of the Doctor’s death was very much over, but the mystery of River Song was only just begun. Her parents might be a good place to start, but she knew they were just as careful as the Doctor, or more so, about the subject of spoilers. So she’d have to be very nosy in a subtle way. But that was okay, she was good at that.

And it could wait. That and her Demon’s Run job. She was in no rush. She was only thirty years old and for a human that was nothing, let alone someone so graced with time as she was. She had years to find out the Doctor’s secrets about her and tell him hers. In the meantime, she was due tomorrow aboard the Starship UK to do some archeological dating. Melody had made the plans before she’d decided to visit her parents and then been sidetracked with the Silencio trip and saving the world.

Which happened a lot more often than anyone else would like. But if there was anything Melody was good at, it was adaptation and improvisation. She was glad to return to her set plans now though because she was dying to get her hands on some of Earth’s old treasures and what the generations since her parents’ time had thought of them.

She must have drifted to sleep because when her phone rang, she started awake. It was too early in the morning in her very isolated apartment. Her parents maybe?

The panel flashed the word Doctor on her screen.

She answered.

“Doctor?”

“No, and neither are you. Where is he?” came the voice of Winston Churchill to answer her.

***

Melody took a second to be surprised and then answered promptly, realizing how important this probably was.

“You’re phoning the time Vortex, it doesn't always work. But the Tardis is smart, she's re-routed the call. Talk quickly. This connection will last less than a minute.”

When Melody heard what Churchill had to say she quickly packed her bags and went to her destination early, realizing that if what she wanted was going to be anywhere it would be on the Starship UK.

She marveled at how easy it was to be in the right time at the right place, like something was guiding her.

It was late when she got where she needed to go and she decided she would rather not go through all the bother of a proper check in. Besides, the knowledge she wanted to take away something of historical value might be a bit of a no-no for her, career-wise.

She searched for the better part of an hour before she found what she was looking for and began to leave only to be stopped by a gun in her face.

“This is the Royal Collection and I'm the bloody Queen. What are you doing here?”

Melody recalled stories from her childhood and her mother’s voice telling her about Liz 10.

“It's about the Doctor, Ma'am. You met him once, didn't you? I know he came here.”

“The Doctor!” Liz asked, lowering her gun.

“He's in trouble. I need to find him.”

“Then why are you stealing a painting?”

Which was a rather practical point actually so Melody handed the painting over.

“Look at it. I need to find the Doctor, and I need to show him this.”

Liz looked at the painting and then at Melody and her face echoed Melody’s own consternation and alarm. There was no time to lose.

Melody found it was rather easy to steal things when the Queen sanctioned your theft.

Of course, then she hastily did some calculations and tried to ascertain exactly what to tell the Doctor. She tried ringing him up but he wouldn’t answer. So she rang her parents.

“Oh, is it time for that already?” her mom asked casually.

“Amy, don’t be flippant,” her dad said. “Look, Mellie, you need to get the Doctor to 102 AD, the Roman encampment by Stonehenge.”

“Okay…will he know what’s going on?”

“No, he’ll be clueless, won’t know you, all that,” her mom said. “And you’re gonna have to pretend you don’t know me or your dad when he shows up.”

“This is ridiculous,” Melody muttered. “Right, how do I get the Doctor there?”

“Try a little graffiti,” her mom said. “Think old and wide and far.”

“You two are no help at all,” Melody spouted. “Right, love you, bye.”

She hung up and cast her mind far and wide, trying to figure out what and how she was going to tell the Doctor.

Gradually the glimmers of a plan came into being and she immediately put it into action.

It was actually a lot of fun and involved some hairy escapades with falling down cliffs, but soon she was on her way to Roman times and got to dress up like Cleopatra. Hallucinogenic lipstick was something she really must learn how to manufacture herself.

She grinned when the Doctor came through the tent flap.

“You graffitied the oldest cliff-face in the universe,” he said accusingly.

“You wouldn't answer your phone,” she rejoined and brought out the painting.

“What's this?”

“It's a painting. Your friend Vincent.” The Doctor eagerly unrolled the canvas while her mother peered over his shoulder. “One of his final works. He had visions, didn't he? I thought you ought to know about this one.”

“Doctor? Doctor, what is this? Why's it exploding?” asked her mother.

“I assume it's some kind of warning,” Melody said, watching the Doctor sit, his brain working overtime.

“Something's going to happen to the Tardis?” her mom said.

“It might not be that literal.”

At least, Melody hoped not. If there was anything she did not want, it was the Tardis exploding. She almost felt that a part of her would wither and die if it did and maybe all of her.

“Does it have a title?” the Doctor asked.

“The Pandorica Opens.”

The Doctor suddenly grinned and strode out of the tent and Melody could hear him issuing orders for horses and she was happy to hear them all stumbling over themselves to obey. But that meant Melody was left alone with her very young looking mother.

“The Pandorica? What is it?”

“A box,” Melody answered. “A cage. A prison. It was built to contain the most feared thing in all the universe.”

“And it's a fairy tale, a legend. It can't be real,” the Doctor said, coming back into the tent. “Which is why I know exactly where to look.” 

He pulled out some maps.

“Hidden, obviously. Buried for centuries. You won't find it on a map,” Melody said.

“No. But if you buried the most dangerous thing in the universe, you'd want to remember where you put it.”

He pointed on the map and Melody turned appreciative eyes toward him. 

“When do we leave?” she asked.

“How does now sound?” he asked.

They got their horses and Melody thanked her Doctor for all the time spent riding on the Tardis trails as well as that one trip with John Wayne. Her mother wasn’t doing nearly as well.

But they made it and started examining the site. The Doctor was rambling on about fry particles, running all over the place, leaving the two women to stare at the massive stones.

“Okay, this Pandorica thing. Last time we saw you, you warned us about it, after we climbed out of the Byzantium.”

“Spoilers!” Melody said, repeating her mother’s own words, putting her finger to her lips.

“No, but you told the Doctor you'd see him again when the Pandorica opens.”

“Maybe I did. But I haven't yet. But I will have.”

Melody took her mother’s bewildered face as payback for all the times Melody hadn't known what was going on and went to find the Doctor.

He discovered the Underhenge and they explored. They found the Pandorica, a huge box, black with sigils, glowing slightly green.

It was opening.

Melody didn’t know why, but it scared her more than a lot of things she’d faced had.

The Doctor explained the legend more fully to her mother while Melody put her time to use examining the stones and comparing the readings to the ones she’d taken up above.

The stones were transmitting, the same signal Vincent heard in his dreams and used to communicate with the Doctor. And others were here, millions of others. Daleks and Cyberman and Sycorax and Sontaran and every alien in every story Melody had ever heard.

“Doctor, I’m going to ask you to do something for me,” she said.

“Favors already?”

“Run. This is everyone who hates you. Run. Please, just run. For once, listen to me and run.”

He stared at her and she could see fear in his eyes because of her fear but he just grinned.

“I don’t run. Well, I do run, but for some reason it’s toward danger, not away from it. Dropped on my head as a child.”

“Eighty four times,” she mumbled.

He looked sharply at her.

“Yeah. So, instead of me running, how about you run?”

“I don’t run either,” she said sharply.

“I need the Tardis,” he said. “As I remember, you are quite good at flying it. Plus, I could use some Romans.”

“For what?”

“Fun,” he said. “They are the largest military machine in the history of the universe after all. Could be useful.”

It was a rubbish plan, but the best one she’d heard so far today, so Melody jumped on her horse and rode for the Roman encampment.

The Roman commander who’d just returned was a mite cross at how she’d bamboozled all his men, but he was soon far too worried about the alien ships flying overheard to worry about that.

And then Melody’s dad showed up, volunteering, and he’d obviously never seen her before, which was disheartening but, never mind, she’d go and have a good Laurel and Hardy flick marathon with him when this was over and done with.

After she sent him and his cohorts to the Doctor she phoned the Doctor and let him know he was surrounded and then went for the Tardis, which was acting up, taking her back to her mother’s childhood house with strange landing marks in the front yard and showing her pictures of books and her parents dressed up and then Melody was very puzzled.

She really had no idea what was going on and she had the feeling that if she were River Song she might have had a much better idea of what she was supposed to do. Maybe.

She called the Doctor and they quickly came to the conclusion that her mother had more to do with this than anyone else. But before Melody could say anything else the connection shut off and Melody felt herself exploding into a million pieces.

***

Melody was certainly living a very curious life. She was in some sort of loop, throwing a gear and lever, running to the Tardis door, and opening it to find a brick wall.

“I’m sorry, Uncle Dear.”

Then back to the beginning again. She did it over and over and over for what could be a couple of thousand years.

But she was also very aware she was in the loop which was unusual in her understanding of time. The whole point of the loop was to keep her safe and oblivious, but Melody was still too aware of what was happening.

It hurt. Somewhere she was burning, she was split into pieces, scattered over all time and space, and it hurt. Her connection to the Tardis was always a visceral experience, but this was beyond anything Melody had ever known.

The worst part of it was knowing that she was actually being shielded from it by the loop and that since she was only part of the Tardis she could only connect on the smallest level so what the Tardis was feeling had to be a million times worse than this strange fiery sensation Melody felt as she ran her loop.

Then there was a point where a strange popping sound occurred and the Doctor stood there with a fez on his head grinning at her.

“And what sort of time do you call this?” she asked, running to him, finally free of the loop and feeling the familiar transportation of a Vortex manipulator.

They landed on top of a roof and her parents were both standing there, looking confused.

“First things first,” she said, about to make a comment about his hat because really, but her mother interrupted her.

“Why did you call him uncle?”

“What?” Melody asked, certain she had done no such thing.

“In the loop, I could hear you,” her dad said.

“Hear me what?”

“Call the Doctor uncle,” her mom said.

“Who said I was calling the Doctor uncle?” she asked innocently.

“Who else would you be talking to?”

“My uncle,” she said pointedly and then distracted them all by killing the Doctor’s fez.

It made up for restraining herself with the Stetson.

Of course there were more distractions in the form of a lovely and handy Dalek and soon they were all running for their lives and the Doctor was spouting nonsense about the Pandorica.

“The Pandorica partially restored one Dalek. If it can't even reboot a single life form properly, how will it reboot the whole of reality?” she asked him impatiently.

“What if we give it a moment of infinite power? Transmit the light from the Pandorica to every particle of space and time simultaneously?”

“Well, that would be lovely, but we can't, because it's completely impossible.”

“Ah, no, you see, it's not,” he said, tapping her on the forehead, which she really hated. “It's _almost_ completely impossible. One spark is all we need.”

“For what?”

“Big Bang Two! Now listen-"

Melody knew well what it was like to watch the Doctor die. She’d done it herself after all, but that had all been a clever ploy and the Doctor was alive and Melody knew how time could be rewritten.

Her mother dropped to her knees despondently and her father held off the Dalek, but Melody took three seconds to just hold herself together and think of what to do.

She told them to run, to go to where the Doctor had disappeared to. Then the Dalek rolled up to her. Melody had never met a Dalek before but she knew all about them.

“You will be exterminated!” 

“Not yet,” she said coolly analyzing it, “your systems are still restoring, which means your shield density is compromised.” She got out her blaster. “One Alpha Mezon burst through your eyestalk would kill you stone dead.”

“Records indicate you will show mercy. You are an associate of the Doctor's.” 

“I'm Melody Pond.” She aimed the gun. “Check your records again.”

She was merciful, but she’d been hunted for most of her life and she knew something the Doctor couldn’t, that sometimes fighting for what was right was making sure that the evil could never come again. She’d never really had the chance to face her past, but she hoped she would one day and she’d have no problem putting a bullet in every Silence she could find and, as for Madame Kovarian…Melody saw no reason for clemency in her case. It was something she didn’t analyze about herself, didn’t speak about with the Doctor, but suspected he knew it was there anyway. Him giving her all her memories back had only cemented that fact.

So the Dalek didn’t stand a chance.

Melody made her way back down to the others and they found the Doctor in the Pandorica preparing to be brilliant and break her heart all at the same time. 

“The Tardis is still burning,” she explained to her parents once she understood herself. “It's exploding at every point in history. If you threw the Pandorica into the explosion, right into the heart of the fire...”

“Then what?” her mother asked.

“Then let there be light. The light from the Pandorica would explode everywhere at once, just like he said.”

“That would work? That would bring everything back?” asked her mom.

“A restoration field, powered by an exploding Tardis, happening at every moment in history. Oh, that's brilliant. It might even work!” She grabbed the Doctor’s sonic and examined what he had been doing. “He's wired the Vortex manipulator to the rest of the box.”

“Why?” asked her dad.

“So he can take it with him. He's going to fly the Pandorica into the heart of the explosion.”

Melody got to work, not bothering to think about what this could all mean for her, for the future. All she knew was that this was the Doctor’s way of saving the universe and she was going to help, as she had always done.

He opened his eyes blearily and looked at her.

“I think I am your uncle,” he said.

“You know full well you’re not,” Melody said briskly.

“In heart,” he said. “That’s okay. I can keep a secret. I don’t know how, but I’m sure I’ll find out.”

“Just try not to die,” she said, feeling the tears well up in the back of her throat.

“I need Amy,” he said.

She gave him one last look and walked out of the Pandorica.

“Amy...he wants to talk to you.”

But her mother wasn’t having any of that. Just like her. Melody had to explain that what the Doctor was doing was tantamount to suicide, to murder really.

But Melody didn’t want to think about that and she didn’t want to look at her parents’ faces anymore and not be able to gain comfort from them. She didn’t want to be their parent; she wanted to be their daughter.

“Now, please. He wants to talk to you before he goes.”

“Not to you?” asked her mother.

“He doesn't really know me yet. Now he never will.”

And Melody stepped back while her mother had her last moment with the Doctor and then held her parents’ hands tightly while the universe changed forever, the Doctor rocketing into the sky.

Melody felt it the moment the Tardis was put together again and the little cracks in her own mind were healed.

But she was also changed then, wandering, barely alive, and certainly not the same as she had been. She was the daughter of Rory Williams and Amy Pond, but she hadn’t been born on the Tardis because there was no Tardis.

All she could do was give a blank blue book as a wedding present before changing until she was someone else entirely and she didn’t really know what happened.

Then bang, everything renewed and she became Melody Pond once more and the Doctor was alive and she remembered him.

She met him outside the hall beside the Tardis. She’d spent her time wandering the halls of the Tardis in her mind, reassuring herself everything was back in place, whole again, just as her mind was now whole.

He gave her back her journal.

“The writing's all back, but I didn't peek.”

“Thank you.”

He gave her back her Vortex manipulator as well and she slipped it on her wrist.

“Melody...who are you?” he asked. “No last name, the Tardis doesn’t even acknowledge you’re alive.” Melody laughed, the Tardis was always protecting her. “You’re very similar to someone else I once knew. Everything you do literally smacks of her. And you’re very connected to me…my niece? So who are you?”

“I think you're going to find out very soon now. And, I’m sorry, your life will change. Hopefully in better ways than you’d ever admit to.”

She’d loved their life on the Tardis but she knew now it wasn’t what he was used to and had probably felt confining. But he’d done it for her parents and for her and she was ever so grateful.

She vanished, not taking the time to look at his face.

She didn’t go see her parents and she didn’t try to find her Doctor. She was knackered, beyond tired, so after a quick trip to make sure that Vincent’s painting was where it was supposed to be, Melody made her way back to her bed and she slept the sleep of the justly exhausted.


	5. Woman of Time

Melody took a much needed vacation. She was tired of being the one who knew everything, she was tired of the Doctor, she was tired of running, she was tired of parents who didn’t know her, she was just tired.

The backwoods of Meltopa 5 were exactly what she wanted and she didn’t meet a single person, hostile or otherwise, for three weeks. She didn’t study, she didn’t exercise, she didn’t read, she didn’t trace timelines, she didn’t investigate; she just rested.

After it was over, she felt more like herself, more like taking on the universe.

So she went back to doing what she was good at for the next few years, taking jobs as they came, gaining experience for her next degree, whatever she decided it would be, not exactly avoiding the Doctor, but not seeking him out either. She regularly went home for every holiday and birthday and enjoyed time spent with her parents. 

Surreptitiously she investigated to see if the Silence were still tailing her and they appeared to have vanished so she wondered if it was safe for her to travel with the Doctor yet. But she was content to wait until he contacted her.

Eventually she decided she couldn’t really put off her Demon’s Run excursion any longer and triple checked her coordinates and time to make sure she landed at the right spot. It was at times like this she really wished she was traveling by Tardis. The things that Vortex manipulators did to her hair…

When she landed she really wished she hadn’t because she was in a cavernous room with bodies lying all around her: a Sontaran and a human girl and so many Headless Monks.

Carnage wasn’t really a sight she associated with the Doctor. Bad things usually happened, people often died, but this had been a proper battle where the whole point was to kill.

Her parents were there, very young, her mother all in white, absolutely broken, and her father like the Roman centurion he had been once upon a time, his bravery covering his heartache. Vastra and Jenny were in the background, but mostly Melody looked for the Doctor, for that figure of outraged justice, practically shaking in his pain.

“What are you doing here?” he said, looking up at her entrance. “Don’t you have somewhere to be? Someone else’s timeline to erase?”

“That’s hardly fair,” she said, standing straight.

He strode over to her, very angry. 

“If you insist on being here, couldn’t you have come sooner? Look, look what happened.”

“I could not have prevented this,” she said.

“You could have tried,” he roared.

“And so, dear Uncle, could you.”

It was the first time she’d directly addressed a younger Doctor by that term. He looked at her sharply and so did her parents.

“This is not my fault,” he said. “I didn’t do this. This isn’t me.”

“Perhaps not directly,” she said, thinking back to her entire childhood. “But this is exactly you, Doctor. Don’t you think the universe might be just a little bit afraid of who you are? Did you think when you started all those years ago, that you’d ever become this? A man so powerful people would stop at nothing to snuff out his life. And now they’ve taken a child, the child of your best friends, and they’re going to turn her into a weapon. And all this, in fear of you.”

“I’m tired of not knowing, Melody,” he said, striding toward her. “You know too much. Tell me who you are. No more games, no more spoilers, no more double Melody/River memories.”

“Doesn’t that tell you who I am?” she asked.

He stopped, stopped and thought, and she watched his brain put it together.

“You,” he said.

“Yes.”

“Are.”

“Yes.”

“Then she was.”

“She was.”

“So you’re both.”

“Indeed.”

“And I’m going to.”

“You’d better.”

He honestly started giggling at that point and then straightened his bow tie.

“How do I look?”

“Amazing,” she told him.

“Shall I do the honors?” he said.

“Please,” she said, dropping a mock curtsey.

The Doctor walked over to her parents and escorted them to her.

“Amy, Rory, I’d like you to meet your daughter, Melody…”

“Pond,” she supplied, smiling shyly.

“What?” her mom asked, looking very confused. “What?”

“Hello, APs,” Melody said. “Sorry for the confusion, but someone had to let you know what to name me.”

“Uh, sorry, I don’t get it,” her dad said.

“This is your daughter all grown up,” said the Doctor. “Thankfully she hasn’t got Rory’s nose.”

“I still have my sword, Doctor,” her dad said absently, staring at Melody. “So, you’re our daughter? Does that mean our baby…?”

“Will be fine,” Melody assured them. “In fact, I think the Doctor might be just about to take you to her.”

“Then you know where she is?” her mom asked, whirling on the Doctor.

“Florida, unless I miss my guess,” the Doctor said, looking to Melody for confirmation.

She nodded.

“But no more spoilers,” she said, smiling. “I don’t want to change too much of my childhood.”

“Thank you, Melody,” the Doctor said, smacking a kiss on her forehead. “Sorry for the shout-y bits, come along, Ponds.” He swaggered back to the Tardis. “Vastra, Jenny, until next time. Melody, you’ll make sure they get home.”

Her parents gave her one more gob smacked look and Melody smiled reassuringly at them.

“It’s okay. The Doctor will find your daughter and he’ll keep you safe. Go with him, go to her. I’ll be waiting for you.”

Her dad put one hesitant hand out and she clasped it firmly. 

“You’ll be okay?” he asked.

“Yes, and so will you. All my love. Now go.”

They turned and went back into the Tardis where the Doctor could be heard cackling.

The Tardis vanished and Vastra and Jenny rounded on Melody.

“Now what was that all about?”

Melody rolled her eyes and explained as best as she could for their knowledge and then took everyone back home.

Then she went to visit her parents. For them it had been forty years since Demon’s Run.

“Oh, sweetie,” her mom said, enveloping her in a hug. “I can’t thank you enough for what you did.”

“So what happened after you left?”

“We went to the orphanage and got you and made our plans for keeping you safe,” her dad said.

Melody nodded. Nothing had changed; her memories were still the same.

“Then what do you remember about River Song?” she asked.

Her mom groaned.

“It’s too hard to remember really. I can remember meeting River Song vaguely, but I remember meeting you at the same time.”

“The Pandorica had both you and River there,” her dad put in. “I think.”

“The beach happened with River there, with you there, with…well, never mind.”

“What?”

“Spoilers, sweetie,” her mom said. “This timeline’s still got to play itself out.”

“So what about Demon’s Run?”

“Well, the first time’s a bit vague because that’s where it all started even if it was in the middle,” her dad said. “River showed up and then the Doctor shoved us in the Tardis and we left to go get you. That’s when our memories started to change. Before that there had only been River. Maybe. It’s so hard to tell.”

“You should ask the Doctor if you can get a straight answer out of him,” her mom suggested. “Our human brains just can’t handle the differences as well. It’s best we forget and if we try too hard to remember we get headaches.”

“Then don’t try,” Melody said, putting her hand over her mother’s. “I’m just glad it worked out.”

“Me too,” her mom said. “I can’t imagine what it would have been like to not watch you grow up in front of me, I hate thinking about the things you went through.”

“I didn’t,” Melody said, putting an arm around each of them. “I grew up your little Melody and that’s what I’ll always be. If slightly better at shooting things than most parents would prefer.”

They laughed at that and she looked at them, gray haired and bent, certainly they never, no matter how much the Tardis had preserved them, would be able to travel with the Doctor long term again.

“Don’t worry about us, Mels,” her mom said, catching her concern. “We’re fine. We’re normal, in fact.”

“I get your mother all to myself, what more could I want?” her dad asked, squeezing Melody’s shoulder. “This is your time to run, honey.”

“I’m running,” she said. “I think soon I’ll be able to run with the Doctor again. Then who knows what we’ll do.”

“Heaven help the universe,” her dad said, winking at her, before they broke the conversation up to have some food.

Melody stayed with her parents for a few weeks making sure they were okay. They had a routine going and she didn’t like to disrupt it. They were older, but still capable of taking care of themselves. Both her grandparents were gone from her mother’s side, but her Grandpa was still hanging on and her parents helped take care of him. Otherwise they were both retired, living comfortably on savings and what the Doctor had set them up with.

Melody swore she would always take care of them as they had taken care of her.

“I’ll always be your Melody,” she said firmly before she said goodbye.

***

The most interesting job offer Melody had yet received was to work with the Church, more specifically Father Octavian. The man was a legend with the clerics, tough and fair. She was a little bit nervous to meet him as she’d heard he had expressed extreme displeasure at being told he was going to work with a young girl with no official training or experience.

Not that she was so very young, not really. But her training and experience had all happened in ways he couldn’t even dream of, so she didn’t let it bother her and simply set out to do her job.

Still, she rather thought she might need some help on this one since she was a bit under read on Weeping Angels. The only problem was that she didn’t want to involve her Doctor because she didn’t want word getting around that he was still alive. The Church most definitely had connections to the Silence even if they were very unofficial and unknown to most of the clerics who were a part of it. So Melody set about getting a hold of whichever Doctor came for her message first.

The plan came together nicely once she knew how the Angel was being transported and the head of security was someone she’d met at uni and had had to be rather rude to due to circumstances entirely beyond her control such as him being a complete prat.

It went beautifully and once she knew the black box was recording she set about giving her message.

“Triple seven, five, slash, three, four, nine by ten, zero, twelve, slash, acorn. Oh, and I could do with an air corridor.”

When she landed in the Tardis on top of a very flabbergasted Doctor she had no time to waste even though she knew how much he hated it when anyone else took over. But there wasn’t any time to explain and this was a time for her more precise Tardis flying skills.

“They've gone into warp drive, we're losing them! Stay close!”

“I'm trying!” he snapped.

“Use the stabilisers.”

“There aren't any stabilisers!”

“The blue switches!”

“The blue ones don't do anything, they're just...blue.”

“Yes, they're blue. They're the blue stabilisers!” She switched them on and they all stopped falling about. “See?”

He glared at her and she wanted to pity him since she knew how much he liked flying about like a mad man.

“Yeah, well, it's just boring now, isn't it? They're boring-ers. They're blue boring-ers.”

Her mother was there too looking very young indeed and positively didn’t have a clue who Melody was.

“Doctor, how come she can fly the Tardis?”

The Doctor was sulking and didn’t answer. For a minute, Melody was struck how very young he was, how much her parents had changed him, given him back some of the maturity and sense of personal responsibility she’d seen from afar in some of his younger selves. Also, how much he’d changed to be a good example for her when she was growing up.

But she couldn’t focus on that, simply flew the Tardis, enjoying it tremendously. It had been too long and the Tardis welcomed it too, welcomed her lovingly.

“I've mapped the probability vectors, done a fold-back on the temporal isometry, charted the ship to its destination, and parked us right alongside.”

They did have a brief argument about the brakes, but then the Doctor bounced right back.

“Come along, Pond, let's have a look.”

“No, wait! Environment checks,” Melody said in exasperation. 

“Oh, yes, sorry! Quite right. Environment checks.” His version of environment checks was to stick his head out the door. “Nice out. We're on Alfava Metraxis, the seventh planet of the Dundra System. Oxygen-rich atmosphere, toxins in the soft band, eleven hour day, and...” he stuck his head back out, “…chances of rain later.”

Melody followed them out and was introduced to her mother and the Doctor called her a Professor.

It made her wonder how such a young Doctor could know something about her future, but she firmly stashed that thought away for future perusal.

The Doctor was eying her like she was an escaped criminal and she didn’t know why. He was so edgy she thought he might explode. But he definitely got intrigued once he found out about the Angel and wasn’t impressed at all by Father Octavian and his men.

She tried to exchange diaries with him, but he apparently didn’t even have one himself yet. This was all going a bit worse than she had expected, especially when her mother got locked in a room with an image of a Weeping Angel.

Of course she got herself out brilliantly and they all trooped into the maze filled with statues where the clerics dashed about setting up perimeters and things like that.

Her mother contented herself with quizzing Melody about the Doctor and Melody did her best not to answer anything, even when the Doctor made little comments about her ‘not saying that last time.’

She realized he was simultaneously experiencing this event in two timelines, one here and now and one with River Song. As the Doctor he wouldn’t be able to forget the previous timeline even if it had been written over. In his personal timeline he was living it for the first time, but as he did so, the memories of the first timeline mingled with what was now established time.

She’d known it would happen that way, but hadn’t really understood, because he’d never been so blatant about showing it before. This must indeed be very early on in his acquaintance with her.

Still, they all had a nice chat about the Aplans, the indigenous life forms of the planet, and then the Doctor stopped suddenly.

“Oh!”

“What's wrong?” asked her mother.

Melody looked, really looked.

“Oh.”

“Exactly,” he said.

“How could we not notice that?” Melody asked.

“Low level perception filter, or maybe we're thick,” he answered, annoyance at himself pouring into his voice.

“What's wrong, sir?” asked Octavian.

“Nobody move. Everyone stay exactly where they are. Bishop, I am truly sorry. I've made a mistake and we are all in danger.”

“What danger?”

“The Aplans. They've got two heads,” Melody answered, seeing as how the Doctor was preoccupied planning their escape.

“Yes, I get that. So?”

“So why don't the statues?” The Doctor constructed a little experiment with the lights and Melody’s worst fears were realized. “They're Angels. All of them!”

So they ran. The clerics they’d left behind at the entrance were dead. The Angels were everywhere. All they had left was a crashed ship leaking radiation above their heads and her mother freaking out about her arm being stone when it was not.

“The statues are advancing on all sides and we don't have the climbing equipment to reach the _Byzantium,_ ” said Octavian.

Melody hadn’t a clue what to do so she did what she usually did in such situations, she turned to the Doctor.

“There's no way up, no way back, no way out. No pressure, but this is usually when you have a really good idea.” 

“There's always a way out,” he said, looking to all sides.

Then the Angels tried to make the Doctor mad and, while it pained her, it also made Melody smile. That was a very bad idea.

“But you're trapped, sir, and about to die,” said Angel Bob.

“Yeah, I'm trapped. Speaking of traps, this trap has got a great big mistake in it. A great big, whopping mistake!”

“What mistake, sir?”

The Doctor turned to her mother.

“Trust me?”

“Yeah.”

He turned to Melody.

“Trust me?”

“Always.”

“You lot - trust me?” the Doctor asked Octavian.

“We have faith, sir.”

“Then give me your gun.” Melody stared. She’d never ever seen the Doctor with a gun. He always had a fit about her family arming itself. “I'm about to do something incredibly stupid and dangerous. When I do...jump.”

“Sorry, can I ask again? You mentioned a mistake?” asked Angel Bob.

“Oh, big mistake. Huge. There's one thing you never put in a trap, if you're smart, if you value your continued existence, if you have any plans about seeing tomorrow, there is one thing you never, ever put in a trap.”

“And what would that be, sir?”

“Me!”

He fired and Melody jumped, grinning with all her might.

***

The problem with jumping in an anti-grav environment was that it was very hard to judge where to land. Melody refrained from rubbing her bruised backside and concentrated on not dying.

They were stuck inside the hallways of the crashed ship and the Doctor had a crazy and wild plan that involved giving the Angels exactly what they needed to move and kill them all.

Melody could see Octavian was at his breaking point. He’d been on a simple snatch and grab job, then everything had turned on its head, his men had been killed, and he was on the run for his life with people he barely knew and barely trusted.

He’d been upset with her being involved from the beginning and while he was definitely impressed with the Doctor’s reputation, he didn’t know him the way he would once he got out of this situation. If he got out. The odds were against any of them getting out at the moment.

Octavian turned to her and his face was utterly fierce.

“Ma’am, I've lost good Clerics today. You trust this man?”

“I absolutely trust him.”

“He's not some kind of madman then?”

Um…well, that was slightly more difficult and what was the appropriate answer exactly?

“I absolutely trust him,” she said again weakly.

So they did it. And they escaped. But something was very wrong with her mother and Melody started to get more worried than she normally did on these expeditions.

They ran into the oxygen forest and left the Doctor behind with the Angels and Melody got a little bit angry at him and his self-sacrificing ways. It was always his way. Send everyone else away, leave himself with the monster of the week, and try to die, making everyone else vulnerable since their best weapon was usually him.

Of course he did mostly manage to think up a clever way of getting out at the last minute. If this had been her Doctor she would have been able to tell him exactly what she thought of it all, but she was so busy watching what she said that she wasn’t doing her best job. Blast him and making her some sort of guardian of time.

Then her mother collapsed while they ran.

“Amy, what's wrong?”

“Four,” she said, continuing her count down.

“Med-scanner, now!” Melody said.

“We can't stay here, we've got to keep moving,” Octavian said.

“We wait for the Doctor,” Melody said, busily using the scanner.

“Our mission is to make this wreckage safe and neutralise the Angels. Until that is achieved...”

“Father Octavian, when the Doctor is in the room, your only mission is to keep him alive long enough to get everyone else home. And, trust me, it's not easy. Now, if he's dead back there, I'll never forgive myself, and if he's alive-" she straightened suddenly. “Doctor, you're standing right behind me, aren't you?”

“Oh, yeah,” he crowed, leaping down beside her. “Say, you’re leaving words out.”

“Pardon me?”

“Sometimes you’re her and sometimes you’re not. Something changed for you, something to change the way you relate to me. Must say, this version’s got a lot more respect.”

“I hate you,” she muttered.

“No, you don’t,” he said confidently, taking over with her mother, figuring out exactly how to save her and then dragging Melody and Octavian off into the forest.

“Why are you sticking around anyway?” the Doctor asked Octavian. “Those are your men back there.”

“It’s my job to make sure this mission is a success, I can trust my men to do their jobs or it’s pointless to make them my men in the first place. You and Melody are the variables here, my place is with you.”

“I almost like him,” the Doctor said.

Then they ran into a crack in time and Melody wrinkled her nose at the déjà vu before she inwardly groaned at needing to keep another secret. She really understood what her mother had said to her at Stonehenge a lot better now.

“That time energy, what's it going to do?” she asked, because she hadn’t really spent any time with the cracks personally.

She’d been too busy exploding and causing them.

“Er, keep eating.”

“How do we stop it?”

“Feed it.”

“Feed it what?” she asked.

“A big complicated space-time event should shut it up for a while.”

“Like what, for instance?”

“Like me, for instance!”

“Why are you so angry?” she rounded on him. “What exactly have I done to make you so angry? What happened to you, Doctor?”

“What did you do to me?” he asked, facing her. “Why are there two of you? You look exactly the same. Why don’t you have a last name? What did you do to River Song?”

“I didn’t do anything,” she said, exasperated.

It was really annoying being blamed for something he’d done.

“I don’t have time for this,” he said, whirling around and stalking further into the forest.

Then Octavian was caught in the grip of an Angel and the Doctor and Melody were forced to leave him behind.

“You ready?” the Doctor asked.

“Content,” Octavian said, his voice brave. “Save my men, that’s all I ask.”

“Go!” the Doctor shouted and he and Melody ran.

They did still need to save the men and her mother, so Melody tried to figure out the teleport. It had never been her best subject, but she was determined to do something and not watch the Doctor half eying her with distrust and half raving with anger about the situation.

She thought that maybe, somehow, his double memories were affecting his concentration; this must be at least one of the first times it had happened to him. He clearly wasn’t used to it and didn’t understand it and wasn’t happy about it. And he blamed her.

But Melody forced herself to put all of that behind her. She wasn’t going to focus on how much it hurt to not have the Doctor trust her because of something that was more his fault than hers. She didn’t regret anything about her life except being forced to kill him and she wanted him to know how much she loved and respected him, how much he’d done for her, how grateful she was. How much fun they could have together.

But now wasn’t that time, so she saved her mother instead.

“Don't open your eyes. You're on the Flight Deck, the Doctor's here, I teleported you. See? Told you I could get it working,” she said flippantly to the Doctor.

“Melody, I could bloody kiss you.”

“What a horrible thought,” Melody said, slightly repulsed. “Doctor, learn to think before you speak.”

He made a face at her but then the Angels came and he saved them all by making it so the Angels had never existed.

Which was rather complicated explaining to the Church when they came to get the men who had been left on the beach because no one could remember what the mission had been in the first place. No one but the Doctor, Melody, and her mother.

They wanted Melody to attend an inquiry so she waited to go with the clerics.

“So, Melody, here we are at the end,” the Doctor said.

“Only the beginning,” she told him.

“Not going to give me any hints?” he asked.

“It's a long story, Doctor, can't be told. It has to be lived. No sneak previews. Well, except for this one: you'll see me again quite soon, when the Pandorica opens.”

“The Pandorica, ha! That's a fairy tale.”

Melody laughed.

“Oh, Doctor, aren't we all? I'll see you there.”

“I look forward to it,” he said, and it seemed he meant it.

“I remember it well,” she said.

“Can I trust you?” he asked. “Can I trust there’s a good reason for the double timeline?”

“Of course,” she said. “It’s more fun that way.”

She winked as the teleport picked her up and she was left with his smile rather than his wrath which she much preferred.

The inquiry went a lot more smoothly than she’d thought it would. There was really nothing they could say against her since their records clearly showed they’d hired her for the purpose she said they had. The footage from the surviving men corroborated bits of her story.

Soon she was back at school becoming a Professor and on her second graduation her parents and the Doctor came to meet her.

“We’re so proud of you,” said her dad.

“You must get tired of saying that,” Melody said.

“Never,” her mom said.

“What’s my present this time?” she asked the Doctor.

“How’d you like to come traveling?” he asked, flipping his sonic idly.

“Is it time?” she asked, barely containing her excitement.

“We’re free now, Melody,” he said, taking her hand. “Free to run wherever we want.”

“Let’s go,” she said, squeezing his hand.

“Oi, take us home first,” her mother said, rolling her eyes.

“And you take good care of her,” her dad told the Doctor sternly.

“Oh, Ponds,” the Doctor said, putting an arm around their shoulders.


	6. Running With the Doctor

Traveling with the Doctor was the perfect life for her. Melody loved it just as she’d always known she would. It was different than when she had been a child or after she’d found out about the Silence. Then she’d always been looking over her shoulder, always confined to the safe jobs, always answering to her parents. But now she was free. Free to run with the Doctor.

The Doctor still treated her somewhat like a child though she was going on fifty. Her proximity to the Tardis made her look like she was only pushing thirty and she felt even younger than that so maybe that was why, though she guessed in the Doctor’s eyes she’d always be the little baby he’d saved from an orphanage; that, and a human being, a somewhat primitive species, compared to his mighty Timelord sensibilities.

Every once in a while she needed to take him down a peg or two by doing something spectacular while they were planet side and it certainly didn’t hurt that the Tardis was often on her side and helped her on occasion.

“It’s your birthday, Melody Pond,” he told her once, spinning the Tardis dials. “Care for a treat?”

“All those important historical dates and you remember my birthday, how sweet,” she said.

“Well, it’s rather tangled up time-wise,” he said. “Makes it memorable.”

“Right,” she said solemnly. “Nothing at all due to my being your favorite honorary niece.”

“I shall forebear from offering the obvious rejoinder,” he said.

Melody raised her eyebrows.

“Quoting, are we?”

“Could be my fabulous verbal skills and things,” he said.

“And things?”

“Shut up,” he said, twirling around her. “Or you won’t get your treat.”

“Since your treats for me usually end up more being treats for you, I highly doubt it,” she said.

“True enough. I shouldn’t be punished just cause you get all insubordinate.”

“That would be a shame,” she agreed, hiding her smile. “So where are we going? Not to see my parents?”

“They’ve gotten all your birthdays ever,” the Doctor said grumpily. “It’s my turn. Besides, time machine. Always plenty of time for more birthdays. You can have as many as you like. Have them all in one go if you want. Ooh, we should try that.”

“Don’t you dare,” she said, casually stabilising their landing. “You know what you’re like with too much birthday cake.”

“Fine,” he said, running past her into the Tardis. “Race you to the wardrobe.”

They got bundled up into nineteenth century clothes and the Doctor proudly displayed the ‘completely unaware he’d been time-displaced’ Stevie Wonder who sang at the Frost Fair. They went ice skating and Melody laughed her head off while the Doctor fell all over the place.

“A millennia in and you still can’t ice skate,” she said, gliding gracefully around him while he floundered.

“I can do other things,” he said sulkily.

They had the best time and then they did go and see her parents and then they ran across time and space again.

For years they ran, saving planets and sightseeing and surfing cosmic storms and meeting historical figures and picnicking on Asgard and seeing the tower on Calderon Bita and having a perfectly wonderful life.

Time was their companion, whirling with them in a dance, playing along with their ideas, molding around their decisions, protecting them from aging, allowing them space to save the universe.

Melody didn’t see how it could end and she never wanted it to. Of course, realistically she couldn’t live forever but she kept on looking young enough that the Doctor didn’t have to be reminded of her not living forever. Besides, it was just about time he realized that seeing the end of someone’s life was not the torture that he always railed about. Naturally it was sad, naturally it reminded him of being the last of his kind, but he couldn’t keep on letting it ruin his relationships with the people he did have, or quitting them too soon. How much of his life he’d wasted by running from people.

So Melody kept him in check and she was happy to do it. Sometimes it seemed like they’d always lived this way and everything before was just a blurry dream. 

It was around the time she’d been named Empress of the Ar’withians and the Doctor had been banned from their system that she got the job offer. It was from a Mr. Lux and involved investigating an entire planet only recently unlocked. A planet that was a library. How could she resist?

But when she told the Doctor he got very quiet and went away into the depths of the Tardis and she couldn’t find him and for once the Tardis refused to help her. She was genuinely very worried; he couldn’t possibly be jealous or sulky because she was going to be gone for a few weeks? He could always just come with her. It sounded like something right up his streak so to speak.

When he finally emerged and let her know he hadn’t been eaten by some monstrosity that had been fermenting in the depths of the Tardis for years and years, he didn’t say anything.

She questioned him in vain and he finally smiled at her and leaned back against the console.

“It’s my turn, Melody Pond. Trust me?”

“Always,” she said.

“Then what’s the one place I’ve always promised to take you?”

“The Singing Towers?” she said, clapping her hands.

“That’s my girl,” he said. “So come along, Pond Jr, we’re going traveling. There’s a dress begging for your attention in the wardrobe.”

He set the Tardis in motion while she ran to get changed and they whirled into the Vortex and landed upon the most beautiful planet Melody had ever seen, and she’d seen so very many.

It was difficult to describe so she didn’t waste her breath trying. It was white and opalescent, colors glimmering everywhere without being overpowering. The smell reminded her of a beach in Hawaii and a pine forest in Washington and the red flowers on the Moon of Varza all at once. But the sounds…the sounds nearly unmade her. The melodies that swirled around her made her feel like her name and being had taken audible form and filled the air around them.

“Thank you,” she said, gripping the Doctor’s hand. She smiled up at him and saw that he was crying. “What’s wrong?” she asked.

“The time has come for us to part, Melody,” he said. “A bit sooner than I wanted, but at least the Tardis will like me better again.”

“She always likes you better,” Melody said. “I’m only going for a few weeks, you know, and you could come with me.”

“No, I can’t,” he said. “But if you need me, just call and I’ll come.”

“I always do,” she said, so very puzzled.

“And I’ll always be there to catch you,” he said. 

“You’re so serious, what’s the matter?”

“I’ve got a present for you,” he said, sticking his hand into his pocket.

“What?” she asked, allowing him the evasion.

He pulled out a sonic screwdriver, not his, but she could see the similarities and the improvements he’d made.

“Really?” she asked, accepting it.

“Really really,” he said. “All yours; just don’t leave home without it.”

“Who would?” she said, examining it carefully, anxious to try it out.

“Some very backwards people?” he said hesitantly.

“Seriously, what is wrong with you?”

“I need to tell you something.”

“I’m listening.”

“There’s something you don’t know about me. Something no one knows. I barely remember it myself, but it’s an important thing. Sort of ‘would blow up the universe if the wrong people knew it’ important.”

“And that is?”

“My name,” he said, not looking at her.

“Excuse me?” she asked, absolutely flabbergasted. 

Never in the wide universe could she ever imagine knowing the Doctor’s name. That was…inconceivable.

He perked up a bit as if the reminder that something was unfathomable about him stroked his ego.

“Absolutely,” he said, tapping her nose. “My name is an infinity of possibilities and I can say it, I will say it, to you. Because you’re going to need it.”

“That’s too much responsibility,” Melody said. “I think it would burn me alive.”

“It would if I tried to say it any other way than the way I will say it,” he said. “But some things have set rules. For once I’m following those rules.”

“Is something bad going to happen?” she asked.

“Something bad already has happened, but something amazing as well. You’re something so amazing, impossible and amazing. I count on you to change my life. So I trust you with one more secret and I’m sorry it’s such a secret, but really I’ve got nothing else in me.”

“But secrets?”

“Such secrets.”

She took a deep breath.

“Then I accept this charge.”

“Good girl.”

The Doctor leaned close to her and whispered in her ear and Melody’s world was completely unmade once again.

There’s no way she could ever explain what happened, no way she could ever understand it. It was simply the most defining experience of her life.

And that was all she would ever have to say about that.

When it was over Melody felt like she’d been sitting on that Tower forever, the Doctor at her side, the songs soaring in her soul.

“Any more surprises for me?” she asked, when she could finally speak again.

“There are always surprises,” he said. “You’re the biggest of them all. So go forth and-"

“Multiply?” she asked cheekily.

He turned bright red.

“Melody Pond! I’m telling your mother on you.”

“She’d probably say it’s about time,” Melody said.

Funnily enough in her entire life of wandering, there hadn’t been much time for men, despite some rather memorable experiences at university. Her life had been all about the Doctor really and she wouldn’t have it any other way.

“I’m sorry about that,” he said.

“I don’t have any regrets,” she said. “Not even missing a whole other life. The one I have had is worth every bit of pain.”

“Thank you,” he said.

They stayed there for a bit longer and Melody enjoyed every bit of it. In the morning she left, hugging the Doctor goodbye, excited and determined to make him come join her even if she had to send up a false alarm.

The last view she had of him he grinned at her and she winked, flashing her new screwdriver at him.

So Melody left the Tardis.

***

The first thing Melody did after getting her debriefing from Mr. Lux, who was an absolute twat, was send a message to the Doctor on his psychic paper. If she was going to put up with this idiot, she was going to have company.

She liked her fellow group for the most part, Anita, both Daves, and even Miss Evangelista. It was going to be a good job. All that was missing was the element of her crazy uncle. When they arrived at the library she saw two figures standing just out of the shadows. It had to be.

But then he turned around and she winced. That was not her Doctor. That wasn’t even a younger version of her Doctor. That was his Tenth self. Oh, this was going to be fun. 

“Hello, Doctor,” she said, illuminating her visor.

“Get out,” was his charming reply.

Oh, so much fun, this was going to be. She sent a quick thought email to everyone on her team that if they mentioned her last name she was going to personally throttle them and send their bodies home to their mothers. There was some quick mental feedback and confusion while the Doctor blathered on about them surviving the Library by running. Eventually they all agreed.

Of course Mr. Lux was just angry there were others in his precious Library and everyone else was panicking about the air. She really shouldn’t have taken this job.

“You came through the north door, yeah? How was that, much damage?” she asked in an attempt to keep professional.

“Please, just leave. I'm asking you seriously and properly, just leave- Hang on, did you say, expedition?”

“My expedition. I funded it,” Mr. Lux said proudly.

“Oh, you're not, are you? Tell me you're not archaeologists.”

“Got a problem with archaeologists?” she asked, raising an eyebrow.

“I'm a time traveller. I point and laugh at archaeologists.”

“Ah,” she said, extending her hand. “Professor Melody, archaeologist.”

He shook her hand and continued to try and get her to leave and she was rather bemused because normally the Doctor didn’t run from anything. This was obviously a very serious situation. He warned them all about staying out of the shadows and she set about obeying his orders, well, except for the one about leaving, because he was the Doctor, even if he was young, and he knew what he was talking about.

After Mr. Lux went on and on about his personal contracts Melody asked the Doctor.

“You think there's danger here. What is it?”

“Something came to this library and killed everything in it. Killed a whole world.”

“That was one hundred years ago. The Library's been silent for a hundred years. Whatever came here is long dead.”

“Bet your life?” he asked seriously.

“Always.”

He looked at her so strangely and she could see his brain start working, not just on their current predicament, but on her.

In the meantime, he explained that they were facing the Vashta Nerada.

“It's what's in the dark. It's what's always in the dark. Lights! That's what we need, lights! You got lights? Form a circle, safe area, big as you can, lights pointing out.”

“Oi, do as he says,” Melody said, gesturing to Anita.

“You're not listening to this man?” Mr. Lux asked.

“Apparently I am.”

She issued orders having them follow the Doctor’s instructions, getting Mr. Lux out of her way, finding out what had happened here, and trying to figure out what this Doctor was like.

“Thanks,” she said.

“For what?”

“The usual. For coming when I call.”

“That was you?” She pulled out her diary and didn’t answer him. “How did you know to do that?”

There was no point in pretending she didn’t know him. Not when he was going to remember this as his first meeting with her and with River Song and Melody had no clue as to what River Song had done on her first meeting with the Doctor.

“I know you don’t know me,” she said. “But trust me when I say I know you.”

“You called me Doctor before,” he said, then squinted. “And sweetie. Oh, that’s new. Professor River Song and Professor Melody.”

“This will be very confusing for you,” she said. “But please believe me when I say I’m on your side. You're younger than I've ever seen you, but you’re still you.”

“Who are you?” he said, his voice thickening with suspicion and she inwardly groaned.

She was going to give him hell for this the next time she saw him.

There wasn’t a lot of time to waste chatting and soon they were involved in a mystery with a strange girl on the computer core and books flying every which way.

Of course it was a tie as to who was more stubborn, Mr. Lux or the Doctor. Or even her. The Doctor kept shooting looks at her, questions burning on the tip of his tongue. Mr. Lux wouldn’t own up as to who CAL was and the Doctor was amazingly predictable in that he wouldn’t sign Mr. Lux’s contracts.

Not that she had.

“Okay, okay, okay. Let's start it again. What happened here? On the actual day a hundred years ago, what physically happened?” the Doctor asked.

“There was a message from The Library. Just one. ‘The lights are going out.’ Then the computer sealed the planet, and there was nothing for a hundred years,” Melody answered promptly.

“It's taken three generations of my family just to decode the seals and get back here,” Mr. Lux said.

“There was one other thing in the last message,” Melody began.

“That's confidential,” Mr. Lux protested.

“I trust this man with my life...with everything.”

“You've only just met him.”

“Nope. He's only just met me,” she replied.

The Doctor looked very intrigued, but he didn’t say anything. He kept looking off into the distance and she could tell that he was remembering everything both ways and she wondered, not for the first time, if he liked her way of doing things or the mysterious River Song’s.

From what she could gather from things he’d said, especially early versions of him, River Song had been very important to him, but in a very different way from how she’d been important to him. Since Melody was only herself, she couldn’t help but be biased and think her relationship with him was better. Certainly she’d spent more time with him and gotten to know him on a purely domestic basis.

She just didn’t know, which made everything she said here dangerous and she wondered if it was possible for her to do something so wrong it would rewrite time again. Maybe that was what her Doctor had been so worried about.

Regardless, this version of her was here now and this version of him was here now. They’d just have to do.

“This is a data extract that came with the message.”

"Four thousand and twenty two saved. No survivors,” he read out loud from her data pad.

“Four thousand and twenty two saved - that's the exact number of people who were in the library when the planet was sealed,” said Melody.

Of course then they lost Miss Evangelista. Not a fun situation, no, not very fun at all. Melody felt responsible for the girl. She should have been paying more attention.

So they all stood there listening to her ghost.

“Whatever did this to her, whatever killed her, I'd like a word with that,” Melody said quietly.

“I'll introduce you,” the Doctor said. “I'm gonna need a packed lunch.”

“Hang on,” she said, getting her pack.

“What's in that book?” he asked. “Before you kept saying that I’d done things, using that book.”

“Spoilers,” Melody said. “You know I can’t say.”

“Who are you?” he asked again.

“Professor Melody…Smith, University of-"

“To me. Who are you to me? Why are the timelines changing? Which one is real? What did you do?”

“Again...spoilers.” She held out the box. “Chicken and a bit of salad. Knock yourself out.”

She chatted with Donna while the Doctor looked for the Vashta Nerada. It pained her to know that this woman who she’d once seen in her head was going to lose everything, but she couldn’t say anything.

It turned out they were surrounded by shadows, by creatures who could strip their flesh in moments and the Doctor said to run.

Proper Dave had two shadows and the Doctor teleported Donna somewhere and they still didn’t know where to run and the Doctor got tetchy again when he saw Melody had her own screwdriver.

Then they lost Proper Dave and the Vashta Nerada treated him like a brand new ride and she had to pull out one of her guns, the one she loved to use because the Doctor seemed to have fond memories of it and mostly it was non-lethal, yet effective.

When the Doctor said to run and took her hand it felt like old times. 

“So what's the plan? Do we have a plan?” she asked.

She used her screwdriver to help him boost the light’s power and he started to pout again.

“Your screwdriver looks exactly like mine.”

“Yeah. You gave it to me.”

“I don't give my screwdriver to anyone.”

“I'm not anyone,” she said.

“Who are you?” he asked for the third time.

“You certainly are a chap of one idea,” she said. “Now, listen to me, I can’t tell you. Spoilers. Got it? So now concentrate and tell me, what's the plan?”

“Get to the Tardis before it leaves,” he said.

But Proper Dave was bearing down on them, Donna had not arrived at the Tardis, and the lights were flickering.

Melody sometimes hated her life.

***

Melody used her gun to destroy public property (or was it Mr. Lux’s private property? A question for another time), and saved them.

“This way! Quickly. Move!” They got to a clear room and the Doctor started checking all the shadows. “Right in the centre, in the middle of the light, quickly! Don't let your shadows cross.”

The Doctor kept looking, banging his screwdriver, and getting rid of chicken legs while everyone else worked on getting lights set up. Naturally everyone now had time to question exactly who the Doctor was and why they couldn’t tell him her last name.

“Who is he? You haven't even told us. You just expect us to trust him,” asked Other Dave.

“He's the Doctor,” Melody said simply.

“And who is ‘the Doctor?’ ” asked Mr. Lux derisively.

“The only story you'll ever tell - if you survive him.”

“You say he's your friend but he doesn't even know who you are,” Anita said.

Melody put down her equipment and focused on her friends. “Listen. All you need to know is this: I'd trust that man to the end of the universe.”

“He doesn't act like he trusts you,” said Anita.

“We’re both time travelers,” Melody explained. “That’s the tiny problem - he hasn't met me yet. In his own time. But I’ve met him. That’s why you can’t tell him my name because it would let him know who I am too soon.”

“Don’t we have enough going on?” Other Dave joked.

Melody swatted his arm and patted Anita’s shoulder and walked over to the Doctor because it didn’t appear that his screwdriver was working properly. In hind sight, telling him how to use it probably wasn’t her best idea ever. In the end she gave him hers to use. 

“So, some time in the future, I just give you my screwdriver?”

“A screwdriver, yes.”

“Why would I do that?” he asked.

“I didn't pluck it from your cold, dead hands if that's what you're worried about,” Melody said, exasperated.

“And I know that because...?”

They squabbled for a few minutes and it actually took Mr. Lux to break them up and Melody made a very very important decision.

She suddenly understood exactly why her Doctor had done what he’d done, equipping her with what she’d need for this expedition, but knowing he had to let her figure out when and how to use what he’d given her.

“Doctor...one day I'm going to be someone you trust completely, but I can't wait for you to find that out. So I'm going to prove it to you.” She bent down and whispered his name, his glorious, powerful, rendering-the-heavens name, in his ear and pulled back. He simply stared at her for a few minutes. “Are we good? Doctor...are we good?”

It took him a moment or two and she wondered how River had done this last time and if it was getting harder or easier for him to separate the two of them in his mind. Judging from later encounters for him and earlier for her it would take him awhile.

“Yeah. Yeah, we're good,” he choked out.

“Good.”

She walked away, trying to compose herself because it actually took a lot of effort to even think his name, let alone say it. It was indeed a heavy burden.

Their first order of business was to find out what was blocking the Doctor’s screwdriver and what was changing around them. Something flashed an image of Donna at them, but then…then Anita grew two shadows and Proper Dave’s suit found them again.

They ran, the Doctor insisting on being stupid and heroic, so Melody ran with Mr. Lux and Anita, leaving Other Dave with the Doctor and hoping it was the right decision.

She was feeling a bit melancholy actually. She really wished her Doctor had come with her or gotten her message. There was such a sense of foreboding inside her and she felt…lonely.

“You know...it's funny, I keep wishing the Doctor was here,” she said to Anita.

“The Doctor is here, isn't he? I mean, he's coming back, right?”

“You know when you see a photograph of someone you know but it's from years before you met them, and it's like they're not quite...finished, they're-they're not quite done yet? Well, yes, the Doctor's here. He came when I called just like he always does. But he’s not the man I grew up with. The man who rescued me from horrors you can’t imagine. I can remember being a little girl and watching him travel through time and save planets.”

“A little girl, I don’t understand,” Anita said.

Somehow it was easier to talk to her when Melody couldn’t see her face.

“I don’t always either,” Melody said, smiling wanly. “But there’s no part of my life that doesn’t involve that man. Oh, the things I’ve seen. Whole armies would turn and run away at the mention of his name and he’d just swagger off back to his Tardis and open the door with a snap of his fingers. The Doctor, in the Tardis, next stop: everywhere.”

“Spoilers!” the Doctor said, jumping down the stairs. “Nobody can open a Tardis by snapping their fingers. Doesn't work like that.”

“It will do. Some day.”

She could see suspicion and acceptance warring on his face, but he didn’t argue with her. He simply went about fixing the situation and having brainwaves like he always did, reassuring Anita, admitting Other Dave wasn’t coming, suddenly decoding the data fragment from the last message.

The people were all saved to the computer. The hard drive at the center of the planet. The Library systems were all down so they had to physically get to the hard drive.

“Well then...let's go!” Lucky she’d studied the schematics of the planet quite thoroughly. She unlocked the floor with her screwdriver. “Gravity platform.”

“I bet I like you,” the Doctor said.

“Oh, you do,” Melody said, grinning at the Doctor.

They traveled downward and found out Mr. Lux’s big secret, his family’s heritage, and Melody liked him just a little bit more than she had before. But there was still no time because the child wasn’t able to cope with all the people crowding around her hard drive. Of course the Doctor came up with a plan that would kill him.

And she couldn’t really argue with him. But she knew, she knew he didn’t end here, he couldn’t. Her entire life depended on him getting out of here. What could she do? The only thing she could do. Poor Anita was dead, Melody had lived her life, so she knocked the Doctor out.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, handcuffing him to the pillar and hooking herself up to the computer.

He woke up when she was almost done and she almost wished he hadn’t. Because this meant that she had to say something, she had to say goodbye, and she didn’t want to. She simply wanted to go out in a blaze of glory and tragedy, thinking of her parents, and saving the Doctor.

“Oh, no, no, no! What are you doing? That's my job,” he said, straining against the handcuffs.

“Your job is to save the universe,” she said. “Mine is to save you.”

“Melody, please, no!” he pleaded.

“Funny thing is, this means you've always known how I was going to die. All the time I’ve known you, you knew I was coming here, no matter how time changed. The last time I saw you, the future you, you took me to Darillium to see the Singing Towers. Oh, what a night that was. The towers sang...and you cried.”

“Auto-destruct in one minute,” said the computer.

“You wouldn't tell me why, but I suppose you knew it was time, my time, once you'd heard about my job offer. You even gave me a sonic screwdriver - that should have been a clue.”

“Let me do this!” he pleaded.

“If you die here, it'll mean our future won’t happen.”

“Time can be rewritten!” he said.

“Don’t you think I know that? Believe me, I know that. But you don’t get to make those decisions again. Not for me. This time it really is my choice because I know what happened and I know what needs to happen. This time I’m going to be the person I want to be.”

“You’re dying for me and I don’t know why,” he said. “All I know is that you’ve done something to time, something happened. But it doesn’t have to be. Whatever lies you’ve been told or have told, whatever thing you think you have to do, it’s not written in stone. I know that.”

“I write it in stone,” she whispered. “It's okay. It's okay, it's not over for you. You'll see me again. You've got all of that to come. You and me, time and space. You watch us run.”

“Melody, you know my name. You whispered my name in my ear. There's only one reason I would ever tell anyone my name. There's only one time I could...why do you have to die for me? Why did I send you here?”

“Hush, now,” Melody said. “Spoilers.”

She connected the cables and her world disappeared in a bright light. She was content. Melody Pond, child of the Tardis, daughter of Amy Pond and Rory Williams, Professor of Archaeology, and companion of the Doctor. It was who she was and she wouldn’t want it any other way.

_Everybody knows that everybody dies. But not every day. Not today. Some days are special. Some days are so, so blessed. Some days, nobody dies at all. Now and then, every once in a very long while, every day in a million days, when the wind stands fair and the Doctor comes to call...everybody lives._


	7. Epilogue: The Library

The Doctor was having an argument with himself, a not infrequent occurrence to be sure, but this time the Tardis was getting involved and phantom versions of his other selves and, really, he was just procrastinating. He knew exactly what to do. Melody Pond had just disappeared from his life, winking at him, gone to save his life even though she didn’t know it. 

He didn’t really save her at all in the end. He’d saved her from many things, but not that. He’d known it shortly after they’d gone to rescue her the first time and it had hit home to him through all his shifting memories that her death at the Library was now a fixed point in time. All his meddling had done that. It had to happen or all the changes he’d made would create too big of a paradox. In erasing River and saving Melody, he'd damned Melody to River's fate.

So now…now he had to go and face Amy and Rory and tell them what he’d done. They’d known almost everything, but he’d never told them about the first time he’d met River. They could barely remember who River Song was half the time, natural old age mingling with their already human brains to create a murky understanding of the timeline shifts. They knew their daughter had once had a different life, but that was about it anymore. Now he’d have to go and tell them.

He had considered not, but they’d be waiting for her. They’d given him their daughter, counting on his protection, and they would know when she didn’t come back. Melody was too good about being the dutiful daughter, too full of time herself to ever forget a birthday or Christmas. There really was no option and the Doctor couldn’t just let them live out their remaining years thinking the worst of what could have happened.

So he finally won (or lost) the argument with himself and pulled the right levers. There was a twisting feeling in his gut as there never had been when he’d gone to see his best friends. He didn’t as much, not really wanting to see them so old when once they’d been like children to him, literally in Amy’s case. They were healthy, remarkably well-preserved as their friends said, but they no longer looked like the people he loved. He was afraid because one day in his personal timeline they’d die. Melody had tried to cure him of ‘such idiocy’ as she’d put it, but even she couldn’t quite fix a millennia of programming. Child of the Tardis though she may have been, she would never know time like he would.

So the Doctor landed in his friends’ backyard and rapped quite politely on the door.

There was a grumble from the other side and then Amy opened it, not a trace of red in her hair, her wrinkles creating wrinkles.

It hurt to look at her.

“Honestly, Doctor, what’s the matter?”

“He knocked,” Rory said from behind her. “What’s happened?”

“You never knock,” Amy agreed. “Where’s Melody?”

“You know that whole thing where we changed her personal timeline and she became a different person yet still managed to do everything her previous self had done?” They nodded their heads, they were so old, he was fascinated by how large Rory’s nose had gotten. Like a parrot’s beak. He tore his eyes from it. “There may have been one thing she had to do that I neglected to tell you about and it’s rather important and I didn’t think it through, sorry.”

They looked at each other and the Doctor again wondered when they’d developed telepathy and opened the door wider and gestured him through. Amy practically hobbled into the kitchen and put on a cuppa while Rory got out a packet of Jammy Dodgers which the Doctor felt vaguely guilty about accepting.

“It’s going to be bad, so sit down and get it over with,” Amy said.

“I won’t punch you, I don’t think,” Rory assured him.

“I might.”

“Amy might.”

“I’ll just stand over here,” the Doctor said.

“Doctor, tell us, you big numpty,” Amy said.

She hadn’t really turned into one of those sweet, little old ladies the Doctor had read so much about. She was more…Amy-ish.

“Melody’s…gone. Not dead, not really,” he said, holding out his hands in defense. “It was a bit of a file transfer, you might say. See, there was a Library with thousands of people inside her head, Charlotte’s head, not Melody’s, only Melody used her own head to help, I wanted to, believe me, but she knocked me out, and when I woke up your respectable daughter had me handcuffed to a post and was doing her saving the planet bit and it was too much for anybody’s brain and then I took her consciousness which was on her screwdriver and uploaded it into the Library so she’s sort of living there…forever now…in a computer…with some friends…and a Doctor Moon…and, well, it all happened before, beforeImetyouatallandbeforeshewasbornandIknewitwasgoingtohappen.”

“I think I might change my mind about the punching,” Rory said calmly. “Tell me again, what you did to my daughter?”

“Slowly,” Amy punctuated.

“My last self, my Tenth body met River Song in the Library and she saved my life, dying in the process. In that first timeline I’d never met her before, but she’d already known me. My future self had given me what I needed to save her, so I did. Then I kept meeting her, I met you, and we all met, and there was a lot out of order bits and things but then I knew she was your daughter, knew she was Melody, and we went to save her.”

“Yes, we were there,” Amy said.

“But the thing is…we changed time. We changed it a lot. Like ‘I’d be slap banged into another regeneration if the Timelords were still around’ a lot. River Song did too much. Melody could take her place and do it just as well or even better but there was one event…the initial point of contact. It became a fixed point in time. I knew she would still have to die for me at the Library. Or…”

“Or what?” they both asked, looking very stern indeed.

“Or the universe would implode. Maybe not exactly, but I’m serious, it was very big timey-wimey stuff going on with double timelines and multiple memory sets and fixed points and literally the paradox would be too grand for any of us to handle. No resolving itself, nothing. But it’s…no less sad.”

“Did she know what she was doing?” Amy asked steadily, hand clasped tightly in Rory’s.

“At the end she did. That’s why she knocked me out. See, the me she was with wasn’t me now, it was me then, me remembering there was a River, but no idea what would happen. She…she said she knew why, that she was making the choice for herself.”

“And she’s in a computer somewhere?” Rory asked.

“I-I came to take you to her to say goodbye.”

“Then what are we blathering about?” Amy asked and punched the Doctor’s shoulder on her way out to the Tardis.

It wasn’t terribly vicious or strong, especially considering her age, but the Doctor flinched.

Rory simply walked past, looking strong and steady and sad like a statue and the Doctor was reminded of another alternate time where things had gone wrong and this man had been smack dab in the middle.

They made the Tardis trip in silence which was rather apt considering how this had all started.

From what the Doctor could tell the Silence were gone or scattered or convinced they'd won. Humanity had overthrown their unknown invaders in the future and the spearpoints of hatred against the Doctor within the organization, like Madame Kovarian, had gone to their deaths without ever discovering their mistake.

When they got to the Library it was silent and still like it had been when the Doctor had first seen it. He didn’t land. There was a planet wide quarantine, harshly imposed, the Vashta Nerada roaming to their heart’s content, but the Doctor materialized within the security grid (largely designed by him) and opened up a channel to the computer core.

“Hello, hello, Charlotte, it’s the Doctor, hello!” 

The figure of a girl appeared on the scanner, an older man standing beside her, looking exactly as he remembered them.

“Hello, Doctor, you don’t look like the Doctor.”

“I’m a bit older,” he said, waving awkwardly. “But I’ve come for a visit. Is my old friend Melody around? I wanted to ask if we could pop in, me and her parents, wouldn’t be an intrusion or anything?”

Charlotte quirked her head to one side.

“I have a lot of room now. Feel free.”

“I’ll activate the ability to teleport into the Tardis and you can save us into your systems. I’ll set up a link so the Tardis can download us when we’re done.”

“Security offline now, Doctor,” Doctor Moon said.

The Doctor pressed a few buttons and he and the Ponds were transported into the world of the Library.

Charlotte and Doctor Moon were waiting for them. The Doctor let Amy and Rory gape awhile, though really they weren’t, and spoke to them.

“Thank you for letting us come,” he said, extending his hands. “Melody around?”

“Melody is with Anita, both Daves, and Miss Evangelista,” Charlotte said. “I shall summon her.”

Another quirk of her head and suddenly Melody was standing beside them, healthy and practically glowing, dressed all in white, hair wild and free and young looking, and the Doctor jumped about a mile in the air.

“Uh, sorry,” he said, almost running to stand behind Rory and Amy. “Don’t want to see me, I’ll just be…over here.”

“Mum, Dad?” Melody asked, grinning.

She ran forward and threw her arms around them, squeezing tightly. The Doctor felt his hearts thump and he wondered if he was going to start leaking or something human-y like that. 

“Oh, sweetie, are you okay?” Amy asked, running her hand through Melody’s hair.

“I’m fine. Absolutely fine. Oh, it’s so good to see you.”

“You’re sure you’re okay?” Rory asked.

“Dad, stop it. I’m fine. I’ve got friends, youth, immortality, every book ever written, I’m grand.”

“Mellie, you-you can’t ever come back out again?” he asked.

“No, Dad,” she said gently. “I’ve no body to come back to. But that’s okay. Don’t blame the Doctor, this was my choice.”

“He knew you were coming here,” Amy said, shooting the Doctor a nasty glare.

“He also knew I was going to choose to come here,” Melody said firmly. “I’ve been many people. Here I finally understand who I am. I have no regrets. I’m glad he did what he did even if he couldn’t change the ending. I’d far rather have the end than the original beginning.”

“Fine,” Amy said. “But we’ll miss you. We won’t see you anymore.”

“We were gonna kick it soon anyway,” Rory mumbled.

“Not the point,” Amy said.

“A point,” Rory replied.

“I love you both so much,” Melody broke in. “I’m so glad you came.”

“We had to,” Amy said.

“Thanks for bringing them, by the way,” Melody said, finally looking over at the Doctor. “Now, Uncle Dear, do I get a hug or are you just going to stand there like a condemned man?”

“You are impossible,” he muttered, almost leaping to hug her.

“You made me this way,” she answered, hugging him closely.

“I could never take credit for such a creation,” he said, bopping her on the nose, feeling a million times better than when he came. “You, Pond Jr., are your own creation.”

“You tinkered,” she whispered.

“I do do that,” he answered, grinning. “Now, now, that’s more like it.” He clapped his hands. “I should come here when I die, great big spaces.”

“You’d be bored to a second death,” Melody said. “But do come and visit. I’ll never look old now.”

Amy nudged the Doctor before he could answer.

“You big idiot,” she said, hugging him. “I’m very fit for a woman my age. I’m getting into the world of records probably.”

“And me,” Rory said. “We’ve had some unfair advantages.”

“You’re welcome,” the Doctor said.

“We forgive you on one condition,” Rory said, somehow communicating with Amy again. Really, how did they do that? “You bring us here when we die.”

After a muttered arrangement with Charlotte and some thoughts on how exactly he’d hook them up with the necessary technology and Melody’s delighted smile, he agreed.

“I knew I’d be stuck with you all my life,” Melody said. “How long have we got now?”

“Another five minutes, give or take,” the Doctor said, automatically checking his watch, but he wasn’t wearing one, or, wait, that was the wrong wrist. “Chat fast.”

“Doctor, this can be the only time we do this,” Doctor Moon said, while the Ponds all circulated, fellowshipping or something like that. “Two more is acceptable, but we cannot be the place where you save all your dead friends. Charlotte will not be able to handle more. We don’t want a repeat of last time.”

“No, no, of course not,” the Doctor said. “Scout’s Honor or someone else’s, I won’t do it. I am grateful to you, Charlotte, for all you’ve done.”

“It’s not lonely here,” she said, grasping his hand. “But we like visitors.”

“I’ll come again…sometime…maybe.”

“You will or I’ll haunt your Timelord behind,” Amy said, coming up from behind him and he jumped again.

Pond women and their sneakiness.

“Right, uh,” he said, clearing his throat. “Time to go. All ashore who’s going ashore, or offshore, yes, offshore.”

Melody hugged her parents one last time.

“Goodbye, Melody Pond, my little rock star,” said Amy.

“I’ll see you soon,” Melody whispered back.

“Goodbye, Melody Pond, my little girl,” said Rory.

“My name is Melody Williams,” Melody said, kissing his cheek.

Rory chuckled, releasing her, and then she hugged the Doctor.

“I am sorry,” he said.

“And I do forgive you,” she answered, looking him full in the eyes. "Always and completely."

“Well, good.”

“Yes, very good. Thank you.”

“For?”

“Changing my life.”

The Doctor smiled and stepped back and he and the Ponds were downloaded back into their bodies on the Tardis.

Amy sat down immediately.

“That takes it out of me,” she said. “Take us home, Doctor, before we do the memorial service right here.”

The Doctor did, and he stayed with them a day or so before he got too bored, but Amy and Rory were branded on his hearts and he always went the extra mile for them and always would.

They were the reason he met Melody Pond, after all.


End file.
